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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27951158">Fading in the Sunlight</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren'>Lomonaaeren</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>From Samhain to the Solstice 2020 [10]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Auror Draco Malfoy, DMLE | Department of Magical Law Enforcement (Harry Potter), Dark Harry Potter, Dubious Consent, Gore, Horror, Life Debt, M/M, Madness, Minor Character Death, Murder, Mystery, POV Draco Malfoy, Sex Rituals, Torture</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 23:54:55</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>22,508</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27951158</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The day that Draco Malfoy sees Harry Potter fade into the sunlight ahead of him as they’re both leaving the Ministry, his life changes. And the hunt is on to find out what really happened to Harry Potter.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Lucius Malfoy/Narcissa Black Malfoy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>From Samhain to the Solstice 2020 [10]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1993852</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>83</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>637</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is another one of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” fics for this year, and should have four parts, to be updated over the next few days. Please note that this is a dark fic, and read the tags.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Draco sighed as he locked his desk and then his office door. Being an Auror was less fulfilling than he’d ever dreamed, although that might not have been the case if the Head Auror let him do fieldwork once in a while.</p><p>But no, they couldn’t “trust someone with a Dark Mark” to come in contact with Dark magic. “Who knows how you might react?” was the way Head Auror Dawlish had phrased it.</p><p>Draco shook his head as he paced towards the lifts. Why had they let him through the training program at all, in that case? They might need someone to do the scutwork, but Draco’s magical reputation and the fact that Potter had testified for him at the first trial after the war had kept him away from that.</p><p>
  <em>They don’t know what to do with me and they don’t know how to get rid of me.</em>
</p><p>The lift arrived with a ding that sounded as tired as Draco felt, and he stepped in and considered, during the trip to the Atrium, quitting, the way he always did. And as he always did, by the time he’d reached the Atrium, he had decided to stick around for at least another month. They’d have to <em>make </em>him quit.</p><p>It was late enough that he’d thought there wouldn’t be anyone queuing in front of the fireplaces, but there was one man. Draco curled his lip. Shaggy black hair, polished Deputy Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement badge on his robes, too-friendly smile as he looked around over his shoulder and spotted Draco. He seemed to see Potter every time the memories of the trial so much as brushed across his mind.</p><p>“Hi, Draco!”</p><p>Draco grunted in response. He never knew how to take this friendly Potter. They weren’t <em>friends, </em>but Potter used his first name and asked after his parents and even sometimes joked about when he was going to get married.</p><p>Draco wasn’t, because marrying a man still wasn’t legal in wizarding Britain, but that was hardly the kind of thing he would tell <em>Potter.</em></p><p>Potter went through the fire ahead of him, and of course he was going to the same place. Security measures instituted after the war ensured that all Ministry Floos gave out on a limited number of anterooms concealed “cleverly” in wizarding enclaves, rather than someone being able to go wherever they wanted (or come from wherever they wanted) directly from the fire. Both Draco and Potter walked out of the Diagon Alley anteroom, and towards the Apparition point.</p><p>“Seriously, though, Draco, I think you would make someone a fine husband.”</p><p>Draco shrugged and let Potter natter. If he could ignore the man’s words, he was fine to look at, with the brilliance shining through his eyes and his animated gestures.</p><p>Not that Potter would ever have returned Draco’s attraction even if he was interested in men. But Draco’s daydreams remained daydreams and thus didn’t have to take that into account.</p><p>“See you around, Draco!” Potter added brightly as Draco stepped onto the Apparition point in front of him.</p><p>Draco grunted again, his right hand gripping his wand, his left hand falling to the pocket where—</p><p>Where the token that allowed him to pass harmlessly through the Manor’s wards <em>should </em>have been. His father was even more paranoid than the Ministry after the war, and insisted that even his son and wife needed one of the silver tokens if they were Apparating into the house.</p><p>Draco rubbed his hand over his eyes and sighed. He’d heard something fall off his desk with a metallic tinkle earlier in the afternoon. That must have been it. He’d have to go back to the Ministry to get it.</p><p>He turned, to step off the Apparition point and tell Potter he could have it.</p><p>He froze the instant he moved. Potter was turned slightly away from him, facing an empty patch of air as if he was talking to someone under a Disillusionment Charm.</p><p>And he was <em>fading. </em></p><p>Draco discovered he was breathing too fast, hoarse and quick, and it sounded much louder than Potter’s words. In fact, he couldn’t hear Potter’s words at all. He opened his mouth and said, “Potter, what the <em>fuck</em>?” He didn’t even care about how much trouble he’d get in if Potter went to the papers with a report of how Draco had talked to him.</p><p>Potter said nothing. He didn’t turn to look at Draco. He faded.</p><p>He became a tattered line of color in the air and sunlight, and rippled once, and was gone.</p><p>Draco stood where he was, glancing back and forth with his eyes only; he couldn’t compel his body to move. The wind whined and whipped past him. Overhead, one early star bright enough to escape being overwhelmed by London’s lights shone. It crossed through Draco’s head, an entirely crazy thought, that he would know what the star was if he had taken Astronomy more seriously.</p><p>His stomach twisted, and he wanted to vomit.</p><p>Then he went back into the anteroom that held the Floo that led to the Ministry, his steps slow and heavy, to fetch his silver token from the desk, and to prepare a report that he might or might not send.</p><p>*</p><p>“You’re sure of what you saw?”</p><p>Draco leaned back against the chair in the large sitting room that had always been his father’s, and nodded. “Yes, sir. I don’t know—I don’t know what the hell that was, but I’m sure of what I saw.”</p><p>Lucius frowned, his hands clasped around his cane, which was no longer an affectation, as he stared into the flames. Draco waited. His father had made enough mistakes that Draco no longer treated him as an automatic source of advice, but in a situation like this, when Draco had no idea what to do, he’d still go to him.</p><p>Lucius finally leaned back. “Would you let me see the memory?”</p><p>Draco had already been prepared for the request, and nodded. An elf brought the Malfoy Pensieve on Lucius’s command, and Draco carefully removed the memory, starting from the time when he had exited the Floo with Potter, and dropped it into the basin. Lucius leaned forwards enough to dip his face in, chin-first. He had always despised people who “plunged” in.</p><p>Draco ran his hand down his face as he waited for his father to revise the memory and wondered what the hell he was going to do. If Potter disappeared and the Department of Magical Law Enforcement became aware that Draco had watched it and done nothing, he would end up in Azkaban for life. On the other hand, if he said nothing, who knew what could be happening to Potter right now?</p><p>A sharp tingle raced up the middle of Draco’s spine, and he grimaced and sighed. Of <em>course </em>that would happen. And of course it would mean that he’d have to ignore the advice his father was most likely to give.</p><p>Lucius lifted his head again. His face was pale. “That is no method of Apparition.”</p><p>Draco nodded. He hadn’t thought it was, but his father knew much more about magical transportation than Draco did. Lucius had even studied it after he got out of Azkaban, and published a small treatise under an assumed name. “So he’s been kidnapped?”</p><p>“That would be the most likely result. Perhaps by whoever was hiding under that Disillusionment Charm.” Lucius gripped the cane until the bottom of it skidded sideways on the carpet and hit the bottom of the table where the Pensieve sat. “Leave this alone, Draco. You have no idea what’s going on, and someone powerful enough to kidnap the Dark Lord’s Bane is too powerful for us to handle.”</p><p>“I’m sorry, Father, but I can’t do that.”</p><p>“Are you so eager to die, Draco?”</p><p>Draco shook his head and gestured to the corona of golden magic that was gathering around his hair. “No. But I owe Potter a life-debt for saving me from Vincent’s fate during the war. I <em>can’t </em>let this go if he’s in danger.”</p><p>Lucius stared at him with parted lips, and then sagged back into his chair. “I thought that was settled with that vow you swore to Potter about never engaging in Dark Arts willingly again.”</p><p>“No. I would have sworn that vow regardless.”</p><p>“<em>Draco.</em>”</p><p>Draco met his father’s eyes and shrugged. “I meant it. I never wanted to have anything to do with the Dark Arts again. But it does mean that because I would have made the vow of my own free will, I didn’t think it was sufficient payment for the debt I owed Potter. So that debt is still unfulfilled.”</p><p>Lucius made a faint, exasperated sound, one hand rising to stroke his face. “Fine. Then you’ll investigate <em>carefully. </em>If Potter was kidnapped and they think you had something to do with it, you’ll be lucky to live to see Azkaban.”</p><p>Draco nodded grimly. There had been a period about five years ago when Potter had acted as if he was tired of the Aurors and being the darling of the media, and he’d even said something about quitting. But after a month’s holiday, he’d come back refreshed, and since then he was everywhere: on the front pages of the <em>Prophet</em>, rescuing lost children in Diagon Alley, accompanying a series of dazzling witches to Ministry galas, making a public spectacle out of his adoption of a Kneazle kitten to encourage other people to donate to animal charities. Draco would be gutted by adoring crowds if he let Potter come to harm.</p><p>But that mattered less to him than the tingle of the life-debt up his spine, and the gnawing worry about what Potter fading into the sunlight that way had meant.</p><p>“I imagine it’ll be all over the papers tomorrow morning anyway. I can gauge the public temper before I go into work.”</p><p>*</p><p>The papers said nothing about it at breakfast. Draco walked slowly into work, all of his muscles prickling the way his spine had last night when he felt the life-debt stirring in his magic. Perhaps they were keeping it quiet so as not to cause a public panic, and would seize him when he was near the offices of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.</p><p>But no one came up to him, or stared at him, or sneered at him—more than usual, anyway. Draco took his seat behind his desk and slid the report he’d written about what he’d seen as Potter faded into the sunlight beneath a stack of paper. Would he need it at all? He didn’t know.</p><p>“Hi, Draco!”</p><p>Draco looked up, blinking. Potter was standing in the doorway of his office, waving at him. He grinned and winked and asked, “Made it home safely yesterday?”</p><p>“Yes, of course,” Draco said. “Although I had to come back to the office to finish something I left undone, which is always annoying.” He was a little surprised that he was answering Potter so effortlessly, but it was a distant, frozen surprise. He managed to smile politely while his brain galloped in panicked circles. “And you?”</p><p>“Oh, yeah. I had a date with Ginny last night. You know, Ginny Weasley?” Potter added, as if he thought Draco made a habit of collecting people with the same first name as ones that annoyed him. “I really think we might make another go of it. When we broke up, we were so young and silly…”</p><p>Draco sat there and let Potter’s prattling flow over him, while he watched the man from beneath half-lowered eyelids. He really did look as though he was perfectly normal, tilting his head a little to the side as though he suspected there might be reporters with cameras lurking in the corridors and he wanted to show off his best profile. (It wasn’t impossible; it had happened before). Then he said something about having to meet Minister Shacklebolt and went sprinting off.</p><p>Draco sat where he’d been left and blinked at nothing before he shook his head and picked up the next report.</p><p>Maybe Potter was testing some super-secret new means of magical transportation. Maybe he’d taken the strangest Portkey ever. Maybe Draco had been tired last night and hadn’t understood what he was seeing, which had influenced the Pensieve memory.</p><p>He could have believed almost anything, if it hadn’t been for the life-debt that still shifted up and down his spine and buzzed annoyingly behind his teeth.</p><p>*</p><p>“Potter wasn’t kidnapped after all?”</p><p>Mother asked the question, even though both she and Father were at the table. Then again, Father had his eyes closed, which suggested that he was too tired for conversation this evening. Trauma from the Dementors took him like that sometimes.</p><p>Draco nodded to her and finished the last of his noodles before he put his fork down. “I don’t know what happened. Maybe he was testing some invention for the Department of Mysteries. He was there and charming everybody as normal.”</p><p>Narcissa sat back, her own fork clasped between her hands so that it stood upright, her gaze distant. Draco waited patiently for her to decide what she was going to say, respectfully. His mother had an odd insight that sometimes meant she could pluck the truth out of the air and out of the most innocuous words.</p><p>This time, she said, “I would have said that was unusual for Mr. Potter, not normal. He was blunt, as I recall, when he spoke for us at the trials and after the war.”</p><p>“Yes, but that was right after the war,” Draco pointed out. “I think someone had a talk with him, or else he realized on his own that people wanted him to be the hero and he decided he would be that. He did want to quit the Ministry at one point, but they let him have a month’s holiday and he came back from it and started charming people. I suppose a month away let him see that he really missed the adoration that comes with the position of the Boy-Who-Lived.”</p><p>Draco knew he was sneering, even with the long-ago dissolution of his grudge against Potter, but he couldn’t help it. <em>He </em>would have done so much more with that fame, even if his goals weren’t the same as Potter’s.</p><p>“Where did he go during that holiday, Draco? Do you know?”</p><p>Draco blinked at her. “Australia, I think. There was something about Granger’s parents having moved there and he went with her to visit them.”</p><p>“And he’s not romantically involved with her?”</p><p>Draco shrugged. “Not that I ever heard of. I thought he was going to shag Ron Weasley at one time—”</p><p>“Draco, don’t use such a crude term in front of your mother,” Lucius snapped.</p><p>Draco looked coolly at him and finished. “Just because of how close they were. But from what I’ve read in the papers and what everyone talks about in the Ministry, he’s dating Weasley’s sister. He stopped by my desk today and said something about being on a date with her.”</p><p>Narcissa closed her eyes and sat there. Draco, fascinated, watched closely and thought she was swaying slightly back and forth in her seat. He shook his head a little. He loved her, but sometimes she scared him.</p><p>“I don’t think the Weasleys would be part of it,” Narcissa said, her voice soft and distant. “If something had happened to Potter.”</p><p>Draco wanted to ask what could possibly have <em>happened, </em>when Potter was walking around the Ministry being a hero like usual, but he held his tongue. His mother’s eyes opened and shone with a distant silver color.</p><p>“But if something happened to him, it is odd that they shouldn’t sense it, as close as they are,” Narcissa whispered. “What has happened? The door, the door that he walks in by and out by. You should examine the door.”</p><p>Then she shivered abruptly, and the upright fork clattered out of her hands and onto the floor. A house-elf appeared at once to retrieve it, and Mother shook her head and glanced back and forth between them. “What did I say?”</p><p>“That I should examine the door Potter goes in and out by.” Draco cleared his throat and reached for his pudding, the treacle tart the house-elves had brought in five minutes and a much less strange time ago. “Mother, I’ve never—seen you have such a strong reaction to something like this.”</p><p>Narcissa smiled, a sad, hard edge to the expression. “I’ve never sought to learn the fate of someone who owes me a life-debt, either.”</p><p>Draco stared at her. “Mother, you said that he paid you the life-debt three years ago. That he came to you and offered you all those old Black artifacts from Number Twelve Grimmauld Place that he didn’t want.”</p><p>“He did.” Narcissa’s voice was sharp now, and she had already recovered from whatever kind of strange fit had seized her when the—prophetic trance?—was done. She leaned back in her seat and raised her eyebrows at Draco, who found himself flushing, unsure. “Which means that I should not be feeling the sense of a life-debt owed.”</p><p>“You do?” Draco sounded like a prophet himself, the way he breathed that. He swallowed and tried to look down at the table, only to find that he’d made a mess of his treacle tart without even realizing it.</p><p>“Yes. Which means there are three possibilities. The artifacts he gave me were not enough to pay the debt, even though I thought they were at the time.” Narcissa’s fingers shredded a napkin. “He decided they were enough and then changed his mind later, and the longer he puts off paying that debt, the more urgent it grows.” She leaned forwards a little and stared at Draco.</p><p>Draco fought the urge to rub his own itching spine against the back of his chair, and stared back.</p><p>“Or,” Narcissa said softly, “the person who paid that debt was not Harry Potter.”</p><p>*</p><p>Draco found himself watching Potter over the next few days, and wondering.</p><p>Logically, of course, his mother had to be right. There was no need for their life-debts—the one Draco owed, the one owed to her—to be acting up if they’d been paid. Draco, though, had assumed that his hadn’t been paid simply because he would have made the oath to leave the Dark Arts alone anyway, and so there was no way it was a sacrifice.</p><p>But it had lain dormant for long years while Potter pranced around and dated people and rescued kittens. Why should it itch now?</p><p>
  <em>If he’s in trouble. If he needs me. Even if he doesn’t know it.</em>
</p><p>There seemed to be no way that Narcissa’s suspicions could be true, though, the more Draco thought about it. Potter was immune to the Imperius Curse, which meant he was immune to all the lesser mind-control spells as well (and if he was immune to the <em>Dark Lord’s </em>Imperius—no matter what Lucius said about it being right after the resurrection and so the Dark Lord having been weak—there was certainly no one in the British wizarding world now who could control him). How could someone else be making him do what they wanted?</p><p>Potions? Maybe, but as Narcissa said, the Weasleys would never have been on the side of Potter taking potions, and they would have noticed. The same with Polyjuice. And both would have required regular doses. Potter didn’t have the habit of drinking from a silver flask the way the fake Moody at Hogwarts in fourth year had. <em>Someone </em>would have noticed.</p><p>He hadn’t changed his behavior suddenly, either. Potter wasn’t that good an actor. If someone had threatened him to get him comply—and with what?—then he would have betrayed himself at some point.</p><p>Frowning, Draco looked up from his desk as Potter sauntered past his office door, heading to lunch in the company of several Aurors. Potter caught Draco’s eye and winked. He ran a hand through his hair as he did it, and seemed to exude self-deprecation.</p><p>He’d told Draco one day last year that he thought Draco had a crush on him, and it didn’t matter, because <em>everyone </em>was a little in love with the Chosen One at some point in their lives. Draco had sneered and stomped away.</p><p>It was true that he could find Potter attractive, and sometimes did, with his insouciant manner and his bright eyes and his strength, magical and physical. But there was still—something missing.</p><p>Draco sat back abruptly, eyes closed, and chased the thought. Yes, there was <em>something </em>missing. He had to figure out what the something was, and he had to abandon work to do it, or he was afraid the thought would never come back to him.</p><p>The <em>intensity</em>.</p><p>Draco opened his eyes and pounded his hand down on the desk, then wished he hadn’t as his palm stung and someone in another office yelled in irritation. But even as he rubbed the heel of his hand, he thought it was worth it.</p><p>Yes. Potter at school had been moody as hell. Never worse than fifth year, true, and Draco hadn’t been around him that often during what would have been their original seventh year. But even after the war, he’d snapped out insults, used sarcasm, initiated duels, and refused to put up with what he saw as nonsense or injustice.</p><p>The Potter who had been around the Ministry in the past five years was…perfect. He didn’t initiate duels. He talked down people who had tried to hurt him. He only fought in defense of someone else, and then only when he had to, with a rueful shake of his head and a sigh that suggested he would much rather have spared them. He wasn’t sarcastic in the least, even when he told Draco that he wouldn’t have been able to help falling in love with the Chosen One.</p><p>(<em>Not </em>that it was love. It had been a crush, on Potter the way he had looked the day he’d defeated the Dark Lord. And it had faded in the last five years, too).</p><p>Even if someone had sat Potter down and had a serious talk with him about the way they needed him to appear to the public, Draco would have seen him let his guard down <em>somewhere. </em>In the Ministry when it was only other employees around. In a darkened corner of a party where he would have drunk Firewhisky and laughed at the stories DMLE flunkies were telling. With a prisoner who had killed or hurt children or someone he cared about.</p><p>Even when Potter had captured Fenrir Greyback right after the werewolf had bitten a young Muggle boy who would have a difficult time fitting in in either world, he had only shaken a head at Greyback more in pity than anger. And he’d stopped an Auror who wanted to kick Greyback. And that was the werewolf who had scarred a Weasley <em>and </em>bitten that werewolf professor Potter had been so fond of.</p><p>Draco sat back, closing his eyes again. Potter had argued for Greyback not to get the Kiss. Well, that might have made sense, because the Potter Draco had remembered was terrified of Dementors.</p><p>But he’d stood back without a word when Greyback was thrown through the Veil in the Department of Mysteries. Even though, at least if rumors confirmed by Draco’s father were true, that was also the way Potter had lost his godfather. It didn’t make sense for him to argue against one punishment and not the other.</p><p>Except that the Wizengamot and the public had been in favor of the Veil. Potter seemed to give up, and give in, any time public opinion might have been against him.</p><p>Still, that was only dim, drifting speculation. Perhaps Potter had known something about the trial or Greyback that Draco hadn’t—or about the Veil—that made that seem the appropriate punishment.</p><p>But still, the idea that Potter would never oppose what the public wanted was both the key and the biggest difference from the Potter he had known in school, Draco was sure. The one he owed that life-debt to.</p><p>He thought about it a few minutes more, then rose and walked down the corridor to the lifts. He thought he remembered the events of two years ago accurately, but he hadn’t been close to any of the people involved. He would have to access the archives and see if what he <em>thought </em>he remembered was true.</p><p>“Auror Malfoy!”</p><p>Draco turned around with a polite smile. “Head Auror.” John Dawlish was a stolidly-built man who Draco would have suspected of bearing the Dark Mark if his father had ever hinted at it. He swept up to Draco and looked him up and down for a long moment.</p><p>Draco bore with it patiently. Probably Dawlish was about to send him on some errand. Well, his own errand to the archives wasn’t urgent.</p><p>“I want to make something clear to you,” Dawlish said, and his voice bristled with his version of malice. “You are to leave the Department of Mysteries’s secrets <em>alone.</em>”</p><p>“Pardon, sir? I haven’t been near the Department of Mysteries in quite some time.”</p><p>“I think you know what I’m talking about, Malfoy.”</p><p>Draco had learned to lie from the best, though, and one of the main reasons he had likened Dawlish to a Death Eater was because so many of them hadn’t. Draco sighed a little and shook his head. “Sir, I know there are people who want to get me in trouble because of my father’s—affiliations during the war. However, I don’t believe the same things he did, and I’ve gone out of my way to show it. Will I ever get any trust for that? Or will I always be suspect because of my name?”</p><p>Dawlish spent a few seconds blinking. Then he said, “Well, I had a report that you were near one of their secrets.”</p><p><em>So either whoever told him this didn’t dare to be more specific for fear that he would start spreading gossip around, or he was told almost nothing. It might not even be associated with the Department of Mysteries. </em>Draco kept his eyes on the floor as he sighed a little. “Remember, sir, there are people who hate me because of things my father did.”</p><p>“They <em>should</em>, Malfoy. What with him being a Death Eater during both wars.”</p><p>“Surely, if he was, then the blame lies with the people who accepted his excuse of being under the Imperius during the first war,” Draco said earnestly. “People in the Ministry, if I’m not mistaken.”</p><p>His gamble paid off. Dawlish was always more anxious about the accusations of corruption and bribery that the Ministry weathered on a regular basis than he was about something as vague as the accusation of coming near a secret. He gulped, his eyes going wide. “I wasn’t in charge then, Malfoy.”</p><p>“Of course not, sir.” Dawlish had only taken over as Head Auror after Gawain Robards had retired.</p><p>Dawlish wavered, then leveled a finger at him. “You still aren’t to discuss what we discussed here with anyone, mind.”</p><p>And he turned and strode away as if he was strutting across a stage. Draco smothered his laughter and tapped his finger against the button for the lifts. If someone thought he was going near the Department of Mysteries just because he was going down, that was their problem.</p><p>*</p><p>“What is it, Draco? You look thoughtful.”</p><p>“What, and I’m never thoughtful? How insulting, Mother.”</p><p>Yet Draco couldn’t muster up a smile, and from the way Narcissa swished her robes around her as she came into the small sitting room, he knew she’d noticed. Narcissa took a seat on the small green couch opposite Draco, blocking his view of the fire. Draco sighed and reached for the glass of cool wine the house-elves had brought him.</p><p><em>House-elves. </em>He grimaced. That only reminded him of his Potter problem.</p><p>“You found something out on the Potter front?” Narcissa prompted.</p><p>Draco nodded. “I went to the archives because I thought I remembered something about a news story from two years ago, and I wanted to see if I was right.” He swallowed a little more wine, not drinking as much as he would have if he was by himself. Honestly, with his mood at the moment, that was probably a good idea rather than otherwise. “This was a story published in <em>Messenger Owl </em>and a few international papers as well as the <em>Prophet. </em>I suppose Potter’s celebrity carries over even abroad.”</p><p>Narcissa only nodded. “And what happened?”</p><p>“Granger proposed a bill that would improve the treatment of house-elves. It stalled in the Wizengamot. Some people were just opposing it based on Granger’s blood status, from the implications in the papers. Potter could have moved it forwards by speaking a few well-timed words. The kind that he’s never hesitated to speak.”</p><p>“Both because Granger is his friend and because it would benefit those whom he believes would be suffering,” Narcissa said, accurately picking up his thoughts.</p><p>Draco nodded. “And he stood back and said nothing. More to the point, when a reporter from the <em>Prophet </em>tracked him down at home and asked him why he wasn’t supporting Granger, he said that he thought she was an interfering busybody who should have studied the issue of house-elves more carefully before she proposed a bill about it.”</p><p>Narcissa choked, her eyes wide. “What—why did no one make more of a fuss about that at the time?”</p><p>Draco sighed. “Because the story came out in the <em>Messenger Owl </em>the day after the bill failed that Potter was only joking. He gave some brief statement about how you could never trust anything the <em>Prophet </em>said, and the like. And then he made jokes until the audience was laughing.”</p><p>Narcissa stared at him. “Well, maybe that was true. I can’t see Granger being friends with him still if he called her a busybody.”</p><p>“I can,” Draco said, with a mental shake to remind himself that he’d known Granger far better than his mother. “She barely had any friends at Hogwarts, and she clung to Potter and Weasley like they were the source of her magic. She didn’t give up on them no matter what they said or did. She forgave Weasley for insulting her in first year, even, in a way that she never would have if she was as proud as I am. I think she could have forgiven Potter.”</p><p>“That doesn’t prove it was real and not a joke.”</p><p>“No. But he undeniably did stand back and not support the bill. I can’t see Potter doing that, either.”</p><p>Narcissa clasped her hands together tightly. “It isn’t the kind of proof that you could take before the Wizengamot.”</p><p>Draco snorted, and ignored the way that his mother raised her eyebrow. “I was never looking for proof up to that standard, Mother. But there is something wrong, and you can feel it for the same reasons I can.” He shifted his shoulders a little, and the life-debt stung him again. It was exactly like having an itch in the middle of his back that he couldn’t reach with his hands or his wand.</p><p>“Did you find the door?”</p><p>“What?” Draco blinked, brought back from his thoughts too suddenly to grasp what she was saying.</p><p>“The door your father said I spoke of. The door he comes in and leaves by.” Narcissa leaned forwards a little. “I think you have to find it, and then all will be made clear.”</p><p>“Not why Potter would betray Granger and people would just excuse it,” Draco muttered, but his words were self-deprecating as much as anything else. <em>He </em>hadn’t noticed that particular slip, either. In fact, he’d felt some satisfaction that Potter had finally decided his Muggleborn friend was self-righteous and inserting her opinion where it wasn’t wanted. “But I’ll look for the door, Mother.”</p><p>“As much as you can without endangering yourself.”</p><p>“You think there is danger, then?” Draco asked quietly. “From the Department of Mysteries?”</p><p>“I don’t know.” His mother looked directly at him, her eyes a soft grey flecked with blue that seemed to tremble now. “I think danger exists, though.”</p><p>Draco touched her hand. “And I will be as careful as I can. I don’t want the life-debt to pull at me longer than I can help, but I wouldn’t do Potter any good if I was dead or injured, either, and the magic knows that.”</p><p>His mother’s eyes fluttered again, but this time shut. She nodded, and her hand tightened on his until his wrist bones creaked.</p><p>Draco found he couldn’t mind.</p><p>*</p><p>“Draco! What are you doing?”</p><p>Draco turned around with a faint smile. He could use Potter’s own perfect nature—whether that was charmed, or compelled, or bargained for—against him now. “I was going to lunch. Isn’t that something people do every day in your world?”</p><p>Potter blinked at him, and Draco stared back. If he hadn’t been so close to Potter, and hadn’t had so many reasons to study him, and hadn’t had so many years behind him at school urging him to memorize the exact color of those eyes, he suspected he wouldn’t have seen it.</p><p>For an instant, Potter’s eyes had been grey, not green.</p><p><em>The Polyjuice theory is looking more likely, despite everything against it, </em>Draco thought, as his heartbeat picked up speed, and waited for Potter to make up some excuse and dart off in pursuit of his next draught. When someone’s true eye color started showing through, they were an instant away from turning back.</p><p>But Potter just scowled at him and snapped, “You’re stalking me is what you’re doing.” And his eyes were undeniably green again.</p><p>Draco turned away a little before he could be accused of staring, and shrugged. “I don’t see how. I was walking down this corridor when <em>you </em>accosted <em>me. </em>I was on my way to lunch. There’s a witch who sets up outside the visitors’ entrance to the Ministry each day, and—”</p><p>“You were taking the track that I take when I come into the Ministry each day.”</p><p><em>The door. You were right, Mother. </em>Draco did his best to smile disarmingly at Potter, who didn’t look as if he was buying it. “Okay, but it’s not as you own this corridor, is it, Potter? And I was on my way to lunch. Let me go now, before my favorite witch leaves.”</p><p>Potter glanced around. Draco let his eyes travel with Potter’s. The corridor remained empty, the grey stone the Ministry was in all the places where no one had any reason to charm it a different color. There were no windows or offices that were in regular use here.</p><p>And, despite the fact that it wasn’t the best-traveled corridor in the Ministry, it was still a public one. Potter didn’t own it. And Draco did in fact travel it when he went to the witch who served the most delicious fish he had ever tasted. Just not every day.</p><p>Potter leaned in. “I know Dawlish warned you, Malfoy,” he said, and there was a rasp to his voice that Draco hadn’t heard since Hogwarts. “I’m doing it now. <em>Stay away from this.</em>”</p><p>Draco rolled his eyes and ignored the way the life-debt had begun to hum down his spine, as if it thought that the angrier Potter was, the more he needed Draco’s help. “Yes, he said something vague about the Department of Mysteries. Don’t worry, Potter, I don’t intend to go probing into that. And I will stay away from your very important corridor after this. I’m sure you own every stone in it.” The lift had finally arrived, and Draco stepped into it.</p><p>“Good, Draco. I’d hate to see you get hurt.”</p><p>And that didn’t bear the tone of a threat, Draco thought, staring stunned as he watched the doors of the lift shut on Potter’s abrupt, shining smile. It sounded as if he was actually concerned for Draco, and trying to protect him from the nasty things in the corridor the way the students in Hogwarts during Draco’s first year had been warned away from the third-floor corridor.</p><p>
  <em>What the hell?</em>
</p><p>Draco shook his head briskly as the lift began moving downwards, and tried to focus his thoughts for the moment on the fish he was going to eat in a few minutes’ time, just in case the rumors of the Ministry having a Legilimens on hand who randomly scanned employees’ thoughts was true. When he was cradling the warm roll of paper-wrapped fish in his hands and heading back up towards his desk, he focused his mind on something else.</p><p>He had undergone a brutal but effective training in Occlumency with his <em>dear </em>aunt Bellatrix. By the time he was sitting at his desk and eating the fish again, he was sure.</p><p>Potter had been turning away when the lifts shut, but not in the manner of someone intending to walk back down the corridor. Instead, he had been walking briskly towards one of the disused offices.</p><p>
  <em>The door. Find the door.</em>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Draco waited, covered in the cloak of a charm he’d modified from the standard Disillusionment Charm. He had publicly and visibly left the Ministry that day, and moaned to a few people on the way out about his father requesting his presence at home. Lucius had his own memories prepared, of himself talking for hours with an illusion of Draco.</p><p>Draco had then returned to the Ministry and cast his charm. It turned him into nothing more than a whisper of air, and he stubbornly appeared that way to both sound and sight until he ended the charm. He hadn’t been able to do anything about scent, but given the Ministry’s resistance to hiring werewolves, it was unlikely to be a problem.</p><p>He had learned, through the hard experience of having a Dark Lord in his home, to sit motionlessly. And now his caution was paying off.</p><p>A small procession came down the corridor that Potter had warned him away from yesterday. Gawain Robards was with them, the first time Draco had seen him since he’d retired, and the current Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Jared Skeeter, a tall man with tired brown eyes and thinning white hair. Behind them were two women Draco thought worked as Hit Wizards, both of them with their wands out.</p><p>No Potter. Hmmm. Perhaps he had accomplished everything he needed to behind the door earlier in the day.</p><p>Draco fell into step behind them as they aimed for the closed office. This was the most dangerous moment, even though the motion of opening the door would also contribute to the sensation of the breeze his disguise caused. Someone might brush against him, there might be defenses he didn’t know about that would reveal him, or the door might be outfitted with a device the Department of Mysteries had supposedly invented months ago that ended all magic.</p><p>Draco’s fingers and toes tingled. He realized he was a moment away from laughter.</p><p>He had trained as an Auror. They wouldn’t use him in the field, but damn, he had missed the sensation of balancing on the edge of danger.</p><p>Not like a Gryffindor, he thought, as he hovered off to the side and watched the complicated protocols that the Hit Wizards had to engage in to release the spells on the door, but like a clever, cunning Slytherin with the world at his feet.</p><p>The door creaked open at last. Draco noticed that there was absolute darkness beyond it, unusual for the Ministry, which would usually have an enchanted window pouring light into every office.</p><p>And more to the point, it opened on a stone staircase.</p><p>Draco smiled as he slipped past Skeeter, who frowned, a little curiously, and made a remark about draughts. But no one else seemed interested, and Draco was at their back as they went down the staircase.</p><p>It spiraled and twisted around itself, and at times became so narrow that Draco had to balance on one foot and wedge himself against the walls to avoid touching someone else. Those were the places that it passed between rooms that supposedly backed onto each other, Draco thought. The rest of the time, they had more room, and the stone steps were large and looked as if they had been hacked into being by spells, rather than carved, the way the rest of the Ministry appeared.</p><p>Draco trailed behind as they finally came to the end of the steps and walked along a smooth, flat corridor that was almost the twin of the one above, only without the closed doors. Where <em>was </em>this place? And why was it so important that it had to be approached this way, instead of by Flooing or even Apparating?</p><p>He got that last answer as they stepped through a doorway that sparkled as if it was hung with a shimmering metallic curtain. Draco shuddered as he moved through it. He’d never felt such strong magic dedicated to separating what was outside from what was inside. No magical transportation would have worked to get past it, even if there was a fireplace inside the room.</p><p>Luckily, it didn’t disrupt Draco’s enchantments, probably because the visitors didn’t want to deal with recasting all their own spells, either. It was simply determined to separate, to—</p><p>To prevent escape.</p><p>Draco understood that the minute he stepped fully into the room and saw the bars, and the barred doors, covering the walls of the room. He stiffened despite himself. He’d spent time in a place like this when he was awaiting trial after the war.</p><p>But that had been, if not public, at least known. From the force of the magic around him now, and the shimmering curtains that covered the barred doors the way they’d covered the arched entrance of the room, Draco was sure that this wasn’t.</p><p>He swallowed, and heard Skeeter say, “Someone really must take care of those draughts.” For the moment, however, he couldn’t even think about what would happen if he was discovered. His gaze darted around the room, but the cells seemed to be empty.</p><p>
  <em>Thank Merlin.</em>
</p><p>Shaking with memories and with a terror that bit at his bones, Draco followed the others. They’d walked towards what appeared to be the only blank wall in the room while he was standing there and trembling like a first-year Hufflepuff. Draco scolded himself silently. Probably this was an old place, disused now, and what they were really after was the potion or charm that made Potter behave the way he did.</p><p>Then Skeeter and Robards reached forwards and put their right hands on the blank wall at the same time, and it dissolved into tatters of mist in front of them. It was the most extensive illusion Draco had ever seen.</p><p>A scream seared the air.</p><p>Draco reeled back, his hands over his ears. He stared at the space the illusion had been covering. It was a wide black space, without bars, so it didn’t seem to be a cell. But then he saw yet another of those shimmering curtains covering it, and he reckoned that it didn’t have bars only because it didn’t need them.</p><p>The space was so dark that Draco didn’t understand what exactly he was seeing. His eyes caught the edge of what looked like a stone bench, barely touched by the light from the <em>Lumos </em>Charms on the Hit Wizards’ wands. There had been no light in the room when they’d entered. A circle of torches on the walls had sprung to life when Skeeter crossed the threshold, but it was too faint and sickly to reach this far.</p><p>Something came flying forwards from the back of the cell and clutched at the air blocked by the anti-magic spell. Hands scraped and clawed as if the barrier was solid, and the scream issued forth again.</p><p>“This gets more impossible each time,” Skeeter said, in the intervals between one of the screams.</p><p>“You were the one who insisted that we had to do this,” Robards snapped, as he took a large blue pebble out of his pocket and set it on the floor in front of the shimmering curtain. Draco actually only noticed that later when he revised the memory in a Pensieve. At the moment, he was too caught up in staring at the figure in the cell, starving-thin, with dark tangled hair that hung past his shoulders and bleeding hands with long, twisted fingernails and a red mouth filled with broken teeth. “I would have let him go.”</p><p>“You were the one who <em>came up with the idea</em>, so don’t tell me—”</p><p>“We’re wasting time,” one of the Hit Wizards interrupted, with a cool swish of her wand. “We need to do this in time for that vital Ministry gala this evening, the one that the French Minister is going to attend.”</p><p>“You’re right, Sasha,” said Skeeter, and he reached down and rapped his wand sharply against the top of the pebble.</p><p>There was a long silence that Draco appreciated after the shrieks of the person in the cell. The <em>creature </em>in the cell? His gaze went back to its face again, and found the gaping mouth opening still wider, but this time the scream seemed cut off.</p><p>The pebble vibrated in place, and a long banner of mist began to unfold from it. At the same time, the person in the cell slumped over, his hands rising as if to shield his face, and then sliding down the shimmering barrier that divided him from the people outside. Draco saw him shuddering all over, though, as if invisible knives were stabbing him.</p><p>And magic bled out from his pores.</p><p>Draco swallowed. He had never seen it before, but he knew at once what it was. <em>Wild magic. </em>Nothing else could sting against his senses that way, as if someone was raising the power for a spell but not directing it anywhere. And this was a deep green-black like the colors in a jungle roaring with full power.</p><p>The green magic spiraled out and met the mist that was hovering in midair from the pebble. There was a long hissing, splashing noise that meant Draco wouldn’t have been surprised to see a waterfall forming in front of him.</p><p>Then the prisoner moaned, and the sound was worse than the screams, because it was a hopeless noise. As if this had happened again, and again, and would keep on happening for hundreds of years, and every day.</p><p>Draco blinked sharply as his eyes burned, and was just in time to see a shadowy figure take shape in the cell and walk away from the crumpled form.</p><p>It merged with the white mist and the spiraling green of the magic, and this time, the noise was a grinding one like a huge rock moving aside. <em>The rock that should have guarded this prison, </em>Draco thought, numb, as he stared at the slumped figure, and the one that had turned away from the cell, shaking his head a little.</p><p>“I’ll still be on time for the gala, right?” asked Harry Potter.</p><p>Robards smiled at him. “Of course, Mr. Potter. And Miss Weasley is waiting for you. I must say, we were a little worried when sunset came and we realized you hadn’t made the journey down here today.”</p><p>Potter shrugged. “I got delayed. But I’m looking forward to the evening, and my date with Ginny.”</p><p>“Yes, let’s think of the future, not the past,” said Skeeter happily, and they turned and walked out of the room, leaving the huddled figure behind them. Draco lingered long enough behind them to watch the illusion-wall reform, and listen to Potter’s footsteps on the stairs. They sounded solid, in the way that he knew no illusion could have created.</p><p>But the figure on the floor of the cell rolled over and stared up at him, and Draco could see them, in the middle of the tangled mass of hair.</p><p>The green eyes of Harry Potter.</p><p>And they were utterly mad.</p><p>*</p><p>“Please, Draco, let the house-elves bring you another glass of wine.”</p><p>Draco managed to nod, because his mother sounded genuinely distressed. He knew nothing was going to soothe <em>his </em>particular mood, or the mad itching of the life-debt magic in his spine, but he could ensure she felt better. He leaned back, cleared his throat, and accepted the glass when the house-elves brought it.</p><p>“I’ve watched the memory three times,” Lucius said, gesturing with his cane at the brimming Pensieve sitting on the dining room table. The new dining room table, as Draco still thought of it, because none of them had been able to bear having the old one where the Dark Lord’s snake had eaten her victims in the house. “And I still don’t understand what I saw.”</p><p>“Neither do I,” Draco whispered. “That’s Potter in the cell, but it’s also Potter walking around in the sunlight and saving people and being an Auror and dating Weasley. If he was mad, how could he be doing that? But if he’s the man I knew, how could he tolerate having someone locked up in the cell like that?”</p><p>Narcissa cleared her throat. “I have a theory.”</p><p>Draco motioned to her. He couldn’t say anything. The wine had moistened his throat and calmed him down more than he’d expected…</p><p>Ah. When he licked his lips, there was a trace of a Calming Draught. Well, he couldn’t pretend he didn’t need it. The sight of the maddened green eyes had affected him far more than even the mad itching of the life-debt.</p><p>“I think that they have created a doppelganger,” Narcissa said. “They take the essence of what they want. An obedient Potter, someone who upholds the laws of the Ministry and acts like the perfect hero in public. You told me that he became abrupt with you when he thought you weren’t taking Dawlish’s warning seriously, Draco.”</p><p>Draco blinked and nodded. “Yes. But Dawlish was warning me about the Department of Mysteries, and this appears to be the doing of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.”</p><p>“The Department of Mysteries could have created this—process.” Narcissa clasped her elbows with her hands. Lucius got up and shifted into the chair next to hers, gently resting his arm around her shoulders. Narcissa sighed and leaned against him. “But it’s Robards and Skeeter who are using it.”</p><p>It would make sense of a number of things, Draco had to acknowledge. Like why “Potter” had opposed Granger’s bill to help house-elves. The Department of Magical Law Enforcement contained a great number of purebloods who would have seen the bill as an infringement on their rights to treat their servants as they saw fit.</p><p>But still…</p><p>“How could they do this?” he whispered. “How could they have decided to reduce Potter to that crawling <em>thing </em>in the cell, and use his magic to create a version of him?” That was what his mother was saying, he thought. No wonder no one had really noticed a difference, or any charm or potion. This <em>was </em>Potter walking around among them daily. Sort of.</p><p>“Greed,” Lucius said, his voice calm and not demanding. Draco still glanced at him incredulously, and his father cleared his throat and sat a little back in his chair. “It would be simple enough, Draco. They wanted someone who would go on being a hero for them, and Potter obviously didn’t want to do that. He had flashes of temper before that holiday five years ago, and he was regularly refusing public appearances. And do you remember when he announced that he wasn’t dating Weasley?”</p><p>Draco blinked. “Vaguely.” He had been involved in one of the few cases the Aurors had let him handle at that point, a matter of internal corruption in the Ministry. “He was dating…I can’t remember.”</p><p>“He was dating a Muggle man,” Narcissa supplied quietly. “You weren’t paying attention to the society pages for good reason, at the time, but I remember. There were horrified letters to the paper every day about how their Chosen One couldn’t be homosexual, how he couldn’t pursue a relationship that put the Statute of Secrecy at risk, about when they were going to get their picture-perfect family and children. Potter told them to fuck off. At least, that was clearly the intent, although the <em>Prophet </em>wouldn’t print it, of course.”</p><p>Draco closed his eyes, shuddering. He felt sick. “He tried to have his own life, and they denied him that.”</p><p>“Yes. That motivation might have been all they needed to create this version of him,” Lucius said simply. “They used the excuse of the month’s holiday to perfect the process, I’m sure, and then portrayed the new Potter as at peace with himself and the Ministry and the world. Of course he broke off the relationship with the Muggle man because it was ‘unsuitable’ and ‘people were counting on him.’ I didn’t think it unreasonable at the time. But with everything else, it makes sense.”</p><p>“In a horrifying way,” Draco whispered, and the itching in his spine grew worse.</p><p>“Draco? What is it, darling?” Narcissa leaned over and put a hand on his wrist. “You had nothing to do with this. If even his best friends didn’t realize that something was wrong, you had no ability to do so.”</p><p>Draco swallowed and focused on her. “I know, but I have to help him somehow.”</p><p>Narcissa shook her head slowly. “You cannot, just as he cannot pay his debt to me. There is nothing left of him, Draco. The shadow that walks around isn’t solid enough. That’s the real reason that the artifacts he gave me didn’t pay the debt, of course. There was no person behind them, no will or consent from the one who truly owed me the debt.”</p><p>“I have to. He <em>needs </em>me.”</p><p>Even if he put it in a Pensieve, Draco knew, he could never make his parents feel the horror he had felt at the sight of Potter screaming in the cell, or convey the itching of his spine now, the harsh tug that wanted him to go back to the Ministry and down the stairs and into that space again.</p><p>“You can’t help him, though,” Lucius said, his voice soft, but he tapped his cane on the carpet to accentuate the words. “He is mad. He would tear you apart if he tried. I saw—Draco, I don’t know if <em>you </em>saw, but that wild magic they’re harvesting from him? It’s truly feral. It filled the whole back of the cell. That’s why it’s so dark in there, why the torches on the walls lit so reluctantly and their light charms didn’t penetrate the shadows. He is only a few months away, at most, from becoming a creature of blood and shadow, not human at all. They’ll probably have to announce he’s died at that point.”</p><p>“I don’t care,” Draco whispered. “The life-debt is tugging at me. Would it do that if there was really nothing of him left, someone I could still save?”</p><p>“It might, because it would be based on <em>your </em>perception,” Narcissa said. Her voice was sweet and sad, her face the softest Draco had ever seen it. “Draco, I understand. The thought of what happened to Potter horrifies me, too. I would never have saved his life if I thought he would end up like this. It would have been more merciful for him to have died at the end of the Dark Lord’s wand. But what can you <em>do</em>?”</p><p>Draco stared at his hands. “I don’t know.” He was glad that he had finally got better at controlling the parade of his thoughts and emotions across his face since the war, because his mother would have been more horrified by what he was thinking now.</p><p>“Then go to bed, dear. Sleep on it. You might even take a holiday tomorrow. You know that Dawlish at least suspects you’re a little too interested in the mystery of Potter. If you can show that you’re distancing yourself…”</p><p>“You’re right,” Draco said, standing up. “I think I’ll tell them I’m sick tomorrow. Just a headache and an upset stomach, but that’s enough.”</p><p>“It is, son.” Lucius smiled sadly at him. “You’re a better man than I am, to have sympathy for someone who opposed us so fiercely.”</p><p>Draco nodded to him, and then turned towards his bedroom. He wanted to scream and ask Lucius who had testified for them at the trials and saved them. That had been the <em>real </em>Potter, glaring green-eyed at Draco when Draco asked him why he’d testified. That, at least, had nothing to do with the life-debts. Magical court procedures outlawed that kind of repayment.</p><p>“<em>Because I know what you’re like, and your father is the only one of the three of you who deserves to go to Azkaban, even if you’re a git.</em>”</p><p>Yes. The real Potter, not the flawless hero the Ministry’s “process” with that blue pebble had produced.</p><p>And Draco had to try to save him. At least <em>try.</em></p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Draco straightened his shoulders and cast the spell that he’d been practicing for what felt like years on himself. It had only been two hours in the silence of his bedroom, but his senses strained for the feeling of time tumbling past him like sand grains in an hourglass.</p><p>He had decided it wouldn’t do much good to leave a record of his passage through the Ministry, even if it was just impressions of his body and voice in late-night guard spells. So, this charm.</p><p>He tossed Floo powder into the fireplace behind the Diagon Alley Apparition point, called “The Ministry for Magic!”, and then touched his wand to his heart. “<em>Per saxum</em>,” he murmured.</p><p>The charm immediately made the world around him waver and turn translucent. Draco glanced at the fireplace in front of him and saw glowing lines studded with what looked like stars, or at least bright silver points. He nodded and stepped forwards, blowing through it.</p><p>The green fire seemed to clasp around him as if it wanted to hurl and toss him the way ordinary Floo travel would, but there was nothing there. Draco blew out of the fireplace in the Atrium as a wisp of air, and traveled up through the motionless, glowing walls, no longer heavy stone but more like crystal columns. He reached the level of the corridor where the door down to Potter’s prison was, and took a deep breath.</p><p>Possibly he hadn’t needed to come here and could have just floated through the walls of the Ministry, but he didn’t know exactly what level the cell was on. Better to use the limited time of the spell as carefully as he could.</p><p>Draco oozed through the wall and found the staircase in front of him. At least going down it was easier now than when he’d taken it that afternoon, now that he was flowing like a ghost. He even kept partially within the wall, just in case someone was down here and might mount the staircase or open the door at the top any second.</p><p>No one met him. But then <em>Draco </em>met the sparkling barrier over the arched doorway at the bottom that was meant to prevent any passage in or out, and paused to study it.</p><p>Would his spell get him through it? The barrier had to be powerful to have contained a wizard as strong as Potter. And if his magic had truly gone feral, as Father had speculated, then it should have ripped its way free long since.</p><p>
  <em>One way to find out. </em>
</p><p>Draco sighed and drifted through the stone on the left side of the barrier.</p><p>Although the wall seemed thicker than usual, tugging at him like mud on his boots, that could have just been the time that had passed since he had cast the charm. Draco was clear of it in a few moments, and floated towards the back of the cell and the illusion that covered it.</p><p>It dissipated the moment he was near it, which was slightly unnerving, but possibly it would react to the presence of anyone in the room who wasn’t Potter. Draco decided firmly that he would think of it that way rather than worry about it, and carefully lowered himself until his glowing, transparent boots were on the floor.</p><p>The man inside the cell lay huddled in a distant corner. Draco could make out that much with his eyes under the charm, better than he had seen earlier when darkness seemed to fill the space.</p><p>Draco willed the charm to end, since he could hardly use his wand in his gaseous state, and abruptly weight returned. Draco swallowed, and knew it wasn’t his imagination that the huddled figure shifted.</p><p>“Potter?” Draco whispered.</p><p>The man rolled upright and ran straight towards him, shrieking.</p><p>Draco flinched, but once again, the bloody hands slammed against the shimmering spell that kept him imprisoned. Potter scratched and snarled, staring at him, his lips open and the red cavern of his mouth showing.</p><p>Draco forgot himself. “Oh, Harry,” he whispered.</p><p>The figure stopped and stared at him. Then he shook his tangled hair and nudged his face forwards until his nose was against the shine of the barrier, perhaps only a few centimeters away from Draco’s. Draco stared at the green eyes and saw something flicker in the back of them.</p><p>“<em>Malfoy</em>.”</p><p>The voice was low and deep and rasping, but it was a word. Draco swallowed and nodded, and said, “Yes. I—I didn’t know you were here. How can I get you out?”</p><p><em>He’s not mad!</em> sang his own voice in the back of Draco’s mind. <em>He’s not mad!</em></p><p>But then Draco reined in his expectations. It was entirely possible that Potter was mad but capable of speaking complete sentences. Draco ought to know what that looked like, after having had Bellatrix stare into his mind for months.</p><p>“You,” Potter said, and his nails scratched and ranged up and down, but he didn’t look away from Draco and didn’t look as if he was falling back into his wild mood from before. “Mesh your magic with mine.”</p><p>Draco blinked, and his hopes in favor of a more coherent Potter got deeper. “All right. But how? The barrier is in the way.”</p><p>Potter smiled.</p><p>The tidal wave of magic that came crashing towards Draco seemed to have actual roaring foam on top of it, and Draco gasped as he got caught in the very edge of it. It flowed around his ankles, around his shoulders, hissed like cold water in his ears, and then withdrew.</p><p>Draco blinked when it retreated and glanced at the barrier. That had been impressive, but he’d already known that Potter was powerful, and—</p><p>A crack stretched across the barrier’s surface.</p><p>Draco found himself gaping at it. Then he shut his mouth, swallowed, and stared again.</p><p>No, it was actually there, a shape like a white pentagram floating in space, sketched in the middle of the barrier’s rippling curtain. Draco snapped his head up and stared at Potter.</p><p>“Reach through the pentagram with your magic,” Potter whispered, leaning towards him, and his eyes flared again with madness. “You can do it. You can reach me if you try.”</p><p>And that was enough to make Draco reach out, his mind full of the Ministry’s secret prison and the debt he owed Potter and the years that they had been draining the man’s magic. And perhaps some thoughts of how little appreciation he had received as an Auror and how he wanted to get some <em>more.</em></p><p>Perhaps.</p><p>The white pentagram flared as Draco fed his magic through it, and then it reached out and <em>yanked.</em> Draco gasped, his head falling back. His body froze, or he knew he would have collapsed.</p><p>But he might not have noticed if his body had fallen to the floor after all. Instead, all his attention channeled straight through the conduit flowing through the pentagram, and the stone around him turned to water. His perspective swung crazily, and then he was behind the barrier with Potter, staring through it with Potter’s eyes, and his hands were bloodied and his body swayed with the force of his magic—</p><p>And the magic was the only thing that was <em>real.</em></p><p>It surged around him, rising up, a cold wave. It rose higher and higher, and the barrier couldn’t stand before it and neither could the stone of the walls. Things <em>broke</em>, with a high soundless vibration, as if they were all wineglasses.</p><p>But he was not.</p><p>Harry laughed, and the echo of his own name in his head was enough to tear Draco free from the melding. He snapped back into his own body, shuddering as he backed away from the no-longer-existing barrier. The whole room was filled with the whirl and the roar and the headlong drowning sensation that Draco suspected was what he would feel if he was capable of keeping his feet in the middle of a tsunami.</p><p>Potter caught his hand before he could back away too far, giving Draco a mad smile as brilliant as broken glass. “You rescued me,” Potter said, in a voice like a gravel pit. “I’ll remember it. You are safe, no matter what happens.”</p><p>“What—what are you going to do?” Draco breathed.</p><p>“Harm them.”</p><p>The stark words made Draco shudder, but he still didn’t look away. He didn’t know if he could. “Who?”</p><p>“Everyone responsible for this. I only know some of their names. But I’ll recognize their power.” Potter leaned closer to him, and Draco found himself staring into the gaps between Potter’s broken teeth, at his red and bleeding gums. In some ways, they were more horrible than the glaring eyes. “They <em>fed </em>on my magic.”</p><p>“What?” Draco was dizzy, breathless, sick.</p><p>“They used my magic to create the fake me. But they did more than that. They harnessed my magic to run machines of their own and fill potions with it. They <em>ate it.</em>” Potter’s hand tightened until pain flared up Draco’s arm from his imprisoned fingers. “As if they were vampires. But vampires would be more humane than they were. They will suffer. Then they’ll die.”</p><p>Draco swallowed, understanding for the first time what he’d unleashed. On the other hand, he truly believed there had been no other option if he wanted to live with his conscience.</p><p>Or stop the life-debt from making his spine itch.</p><p>He put out a restraining hand as Potter turned towards the secret staircase that led down from the top of the Ministry, although he knew he would have as much chance of <em>actually </em>restraining Potter as a child would have of stopping a volcano. “Wait.”</p><p>“Wait for <em>what</em>, Malfoy? I’m free. They’ll suffer.”</p><p>“And then die, I know,” Draco snapped, and froze as he watched the dark green, radiant, actually <em>rippling </em>eyes turn to him.</p><p>Unexpectedly, Potter laughed, and his gums trembled for a moment as if new teeth were working their way through, but he didn’t explode in some terrifying display of magic. He settled back with one elbow against the wall, glowing with power. “Fine, Malfoy. Wait for what? I’ve almost missed you mocking me, you know.”</p><p>Draco blinked, unnerved by the order of those sentences, but reasoned his way through. “If they muster up the full night of the Ministry against you—and they will, to protect this secret—then you’ll die. Is that what you want?”</p><p>“I’m dying anyway,” Potter said simply. “They fed on my magic to the point that it’ll turn on me next, without the constant draining. I might as well take them with me before I go.”</p><p>“<em>No</em>—”</p><p>“You don’t have a lot of say about how I take my vengeance, Malfoy.”</p><p>“I didn’t mean <em>no</em> to that part. I meant that you—can’t be dying.”</p><p>It was one of the strangest things that had happened to Draco in the last few days, the way that Potter’s eyes softened with something like compassion. “I don’t like it, either, but that’s what happens. They were stabilizing me, in a way, by constantly taking from me. And I know I sound sane right now, but don’t be mistaken. I’m mad, and dying. The only thing I’ll have a chance to do is take them with me.”</p><p>“If—if you could have a chance at a revenge greater than that? Something that would get you remembered as someone other than a person who just went mad one day and leveled half the Ministry? Would you take it?”</p><p>Potter shrugged in a sinuous way that made Draco realize shadows were drifting around his elbows, as if he was fading like the doppelganger they had made from his magic. Draco quickly snapped his eyes back to Potter’s face. “If I could, sure. But I told you, I’ll be lucky to last even a little longer than this.”</p><p>Draco swallowed heavily and laid a hand on Potter’s arm. For a moment, the flesh <em>did </em>give way beneath his touch, and then it bounced back up as if he was touching a cushion. Potter watched him with a sardonic expression, maybe for his gulp.</p><p>“There are rituals that could stabilize you.”</p><p>“What kind?”</p><p>Pleased that Potter hadn’t immediately accused him of wanting to sacrifice unicorns or something like that, Draco held his gaze. “Sex rituals.”</p><p>Potter raised his eyebrows and said, “I don’t think my body is stable enough for that, either.”</p><p>“If—if we go to a highly magical place, like the grounds of Malfoy Manor and use the circle of standing stones that some of my ancestors used and we were both willing…” Draco crossed his arms over his chest as his brain caught up with his words. Was he really going to do this just to save a man who most people didn’t even know was dying?</p><p>
  <em>Yes. I am. </em>
</p><p>And Draco could pretend that it was all down to the raking of the life-debt’s claws down his back and that he didn’t want to lose the power to fulfill that debt forever with Potter’s death, but in the privacy of his head, he didn’t have to lie.</p><p>He met Potter’s eyes, the shifting ribbons of sanity and bloody-mindedness shifting back and forth there, and then Potter nodded. Even that motion had a shadow it shouldn’t have had. “All right. But if you try to put me in the dungeons again, I’ll dissolve you.”</p><p>Draco had no doubt that Potter both meant it and was being literal. He nodded hastily. “I wouldn’t do that to you. Come on.”</p><p>And quietly, they went back up the secret staircase, Potter’s magic washing back and forth around them, and destroying every trap or barrier that might have held them in place. Draco’s only relief, whenever Potter glanced at him with those moon-mad eyes, was that the Ministry could hardly announce that Harry Potter had broken out of their secret prison where they were draining him of magic.</p><p>
  <em>But they can report him missing when the doppelganger fades…</em>
</p><p>Draco shuddered, and climbed faster.</p><p>*</p><p>“Are you going to show me to your parents?”</p><p>Draco snorted and glanced over his shoulder. He was crouched in the ring of standing stones not far from the Manor, his hand steady as he traced his wand in the rune-shapes he needed. “No. They tried to persuade me not to rescue you. To give them some credit, they thought you were irredeemably mad.”</p><p>“How did you find me?”</p><p>“The doppelganger that they made from you faded right in front of me. It must have been at the end of the time when—” Draco bit his tongue and concentrated on the rune that was taking shape in the light of the <em>Lumos </em>Charm hovering as a separate ball of light in front of him. He couldn’t afford to mess up the shape.</p><p>“Near the end of the time when the magic powering it ran out.”</p><p>Draco finished the rune and glanced back at Potter again. Potter was leaning against one of the stones. The shadows that flickered around him had grown worse, to the point that his torso and part of his legs seemed to be covered with a drifting veil. His eyes and partially toothless mouth still shone above that, though. “You don’t mind discussing it?”</p><p>“Why would I? I’m going to kill them all.”</p><p>Draco paused, then nodded. His mind had already worked on that a bit. It would be easier for no one to miss Gawain Robards, who besides being retired was a notorious misanthrope. But Jared Skeeter would be much harder to make vanish, and Draco knew nothing about the Hit Wizards who had accompanied them, or anyone else who might have—</p><p>
  <em>Fed on Potter’s magic. Make yourself think it, Draco. Face it. </em>
</p><p>“All right. But you know that you should probably have a better plan than just <em>kill everyone</em>, right?”</p><p>“Isn’t that where you come in?”</p><p>Draco frowned as he moved to another part of the circle to create a spiral of runes at the base of the next stone. “What do you mean?”</p><p>“You’re the cunning Slytherin. Plan something.”</p><p>“All right.” Draco kept his voice level with an effort. He had planned on being part of Potter’s vengeance effort if he could, after all. He just hadn’t known that Potter would welcome him once the sex ritual was performed and his magic stabilized.</p><p>It made something that wasn’t exactly warmth rise up in him as he realized that Potter <em>would </em>welcome his participation. But “warmth” would do as a name for it.</p><p>Draco stood when he finished the last rune and took a deep breath. He turned to face Potter. “All right. The runes are done. I’m going to power them with my magic because I’m the Malfoy here and you’re—going to be involved in a different magical effort deeply enough as it is. How do you want to do this?”</p><p>“The ritual has requirements, I thought.”</p><p>Potter’s head was lowered, and his eyes gleamed as if they were those of a beast lurking beside a fire. Draco reminded himself that this particular beast didn’t want to hurt <em>him</em>, and held Potter’s gaze. “It does. But I don’t know what kind of sex you’ve had with men in the past or what trauma you might have as a result of being imprisoned.”</p><p>Potter’s eyes widened for a moment. Then he snorted. “You probably remember that I was dating a man when they—” He glanced away for a moment.</p><p>Draco didn’t mention that it had taken his mother to inform him of that. “I know. And I prefer men. We do need full penetration for this, but I thought I’d let you choose the position and anything else required.”</p><p>“You don’t have preferences?”</p><p>“I haven’t had so much sex in the last few years that I could afford to turn up my nose at anything, Potter.”</p><p>Potter paused for a long moment. Then he pushed away from the stone he was leaning against and glided across the circle towards Draco. Draco swallowed while feeling his desire rise. He tried not to move or show that, having no idea how it would make Potter react.</p><p>Potter gripped his shoulders and leaned close to whisper into Draco’s ear. His hands, at least, were as solid as the stones of the circle.</p><p>“I don’t want you to do something against your will. I will <em>never </em>do anything like that to anyone again who isn’t one of my enemies. Do you understand?”</p><p>Draco nodded, overwhelmed by Potter’s closeness, and the heat beating from his body as if he was a bonfire, and the feeling of his magic rearing up again like another tsunami, except a hot one this time. He nodded a second time when he realized that Potter was still staring at him as if he hadn’t seen the first one.</p><p>“Good.” Potter stepped away from Draco. “I would prefer to top you. I can’t stand to be held down.” He started to take off his clothes, although they were such rags that it amounted more to tearing them off.</p><p>Draco licked his lips in anticipation and turned to face the runes in the circle even as he began to remove his own robes. The runes lit the instant they felt his intention, and a dome of silver light rose to encircle the standing stones. Draco was just glad that this ritual wasn’t classified as Dark Arts, or he would have been unable to complete it due to the oath that he’d sworn to the false Potter.</p><p>Although…would that oath hold if he had sworn it to a doppelganger?</p><p>Draco shook his head. He would think on it later. He didn’t have to wield any Dark Arts to use the circle to stabilize Potter’s magic. The will they both brought it to and the energy they would generate because of their fucking would make it powerful enough.</p><p>When he was naked, he cast the charms that would soften the earth a little; while the runes would take care of most of the discomforts or distractions that could prevent a successful sex ritual from happening, there was no reason to strain them. Draco turned to face Potter, and caught his breath a little.</p><p>Naked, Potter still had the shadows drifting around him, and there were ropy scars circling his torso that suggested either the wild magic could leave a mark or that his captors hadn’t always taken their toll on his power alone. But he was all corded and shining, alive and pale, and blazing with strength.</p><p>Potter glanced away. “You don’t have to stare,” he said, his voice as bitter as oil.</p><p>“I can’t admire a survivor?”</p><p>Draco winced the minute the words were out of his mouth. They would probably sound mocking no matter what, and he didn’t want someone with an unstable mind and magic to turn on him. But Potter huffed out a blast of air and turned back to face him.</p><p>“<em>You </em>must know that you’re beautiful.”</p><p>“It’s still pleasant to hear.” Draco stepped up to Potter and extended his hands. Potter eyed him until Draco said, “You need to clasp them and draw me closer. Our chests need to touch.”</p><p>Potter nodded slowly and did it, also slowly. Draco thought he understood when his chest touched Potter’s, which was as soft and cold as drifting snow, as if it was breaking apart underneath his touch.</p><p>Draco still stepped forwards, until they were pushed together from shoulders to groin, and heard one of the runes link to another behind him. He stood there until the others did the same thing, and a golden dome of light like an upended cup rose between the sanding stones, curving nearly high enough to meet the silver one overhead.</p><p>“Come with me,” he whispered, and started to pull Potter backwards.</p><p>Potter stopped him with fingers on Draco’s shoulder that felt too thin. Draco looked at him, and Potter leaned in and, clumsily, slowly, kissed him.</p><p>Draco sighed in pleasure and leaned forwards until he was almost swaying from his feet. Despite the missing teeth and the bloodied gums and everything else that had made it hard to look at Potter when he rescued him from the cell, this was still warm and pressing and from someone who wanted him.</p><p>Even if that person wanted his strength and his magic to continue to survive…Draco didn’t really care. He continued to pull and tug, and Potter stumbled slowly after him, biting his lip, eyes wide and anxious.</p><p>Anxious was better than mad, as far as Draco was concerned. He smiled and glanced over his shoulder once to make sure that the runes had done everything they were supposed to. Yes. The grass and dirt between the standing stones had turned into an enormous, pillowy mattress.</p><p>“I’ll lie back, and you can straddle me,” he whispered. “All right?”</p><p>“Lubrication.” Potter said the word uncertainly, his eyes flickering between Draco and the domes of light above and beneath them.</p><p>“The circle will provide it. It’ll do everything we need it to.”</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“Because we come to it willingly, and seeking strength,” Draco whispered. He didn’t think it a good idea just then to mention that there were other circles on the grounds that could be used for rape and sacrifice, or for seducing an enemy and coaxing weakness into their magic. Those were his ancestors’ faults, and he would be making up for them now if anything could. He swallowed. “Do you?”</p><p>Potter hesitated, but since he seemed to be thinking it through, Draco didn’t panic, just waited for him. And finally, Potter nodded, his mouth curving into a ghost of a smile.</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>He crossed the edge of the golden dome, stepping over it as over the rim of a bathtub even though there was no need for that, and joined Draco.</p><p>*</p><p>Draco had known, in theory, how this ritual would work. His father had brought him here when he turned seventeen and instructed him in it. The memories stood out in Draco’s mind in crystalline perfection, even as terrified as he’d been that year with the Dark Lord living in the Manor, because they were meant to. The circle itself would stamp the memories into a Malfoy heir’s mind to ensure that they were passed down.</p><p>But he was unprepared for the swell of power that scooped him up and held him, floating, in the air for a moment, like the warm counterpart of the cold one that he’d felt coming from Potter’s cell.</p><p>Potter screamed, a sudden, haunting sound, and Draco turned to him in panic. But Potter was only staring at his body, and Draco watched as the drifting shadows were peeled away like a cloak and flung over the rim of the golden dome, out of the circle of stones.</p><p>Potter closed his eyes, and tears made their way down his cheeks. He wept without a sound.</p><p>Draco politely averted his eyes, and smiled as he felt the slickness of some sort of oil trickle down his cleft and legs. He flexed his arse a little, and yes, his muscles had relaxed. He felt as if someone had spent half an hour lovingly, patiently playing with him.</p><p>He felt a stab of regret that he would never have that with Potter, but needs must. At least he would have <em>this.</em></p><p>He held out his hand. “Harry James Potter,” he said, “will you join with me?”</p><p>Potter stared at him with eyes that were still wild, but saner. “Yes,” he said, and walked over to Draco, although he paused halfway there to stare down at his cock. Draco knew he must have felt it becoming slick.</p><p>Draco lay back, and the mattress that the grass had transformed into rose to meet his back, cradling him. He hardly made a dent in it. He spread his legs and sighed, lifting his arse. A pillow-like projection formed under it at once.</p><p>Potter laughed, and put a hand across his mouth as if the sound had come from outside of him. Then he knelt down in front of Draco. He put a hand on his hip. Draco met his eyes steadily, and Potter blinked, and another pair of tears slid down his cheeks.</p><p>“Am I real?” Potter whispered. “Are you?”</p><p>“Yes,” Draco said. “And yes.”</p><p>Potter bent over his body and kissed him desperately, fervently, as if Draco’s words were the permission he’d needed to do so. Then he reared back, placed both his hands on Draco’s hips, and slid into him as Draco lifted his arse to make the angle a little easier for the both of them. The warmth and the fullness made Draco close his eyes.</p><p>But he opened them almost instantly, because Potter had made a soft noise of distress, and because, for his own selfish reasons, Draco didn’t want to lose a moment when he could be making love with Harry Potter.</p><p>Harry—Draco could call him that, if he liked, even if it had to be in the privacy of his own head—shivered and began to thrust. The golden magic crawled the rest of the way up the standing stones, reaching the silver dome that hovered above them, and they looked as if they were cradled in two halves of a giant egg.</p><p>“I don’t think I can be—gentle.” Harry forced the words between his clenched and missing teeth.</p><p>“You don’t need to be. This circle is going to ensure that we don’t get hurt.” Draco laid his hands out above his head, but then reached over to squeeze Harry’s clenched forearm. “Do what you need to do.”</p><p>Harry swallowed once, and then nodded and began to thrust so hard that Draco knew he would undoubtedly have been in pain outside the ritual. But they were <em>within </em>it, and he felt only heat and pleasure.</p><p>He closed his eyes and bathed in it, feeling his magic flowing away from him in glittering streams to touch the runes of the circle. But the streams glittered only on the insides of his eyelids; when he fluttered his eyes open to look, he saw nothing. He was glad for that. It might have reminded Harry too much of what it had looked like when his enemies had harvested wild magic from him.</p><p>Then the pleasure burst in him like Fiendfyre, and Draco forgot to keep track of the progress of the ritual. He was on the mattress beneath Harry, now and then managing to touch his arm or another piece of sweat-soaked skin, but mostly reveling in the sensations that Harry’s fucking was sending through him.</p><p>And he was holding Harry’s eyes, always, because Harry was keeping his neck crooked in the same position, with an effort that looked painful, his gaze fierce and demanding and locked on Draco’s.</p><p>It was the best sex he had ever had. Draco didn’t know how much of that was the ritual and how much was the circle and how much was Harry, but he didn’t have to know.</p><p>He had to keep looking, and he had to lift his arse now and then to push himself back and get a little more impaled on Harry’s cock, and he had to watch the play of silver and golden light over Harry’s body, the dance of it like lightning in his eyes.</p><p>It went on longer than Draco could have thought it would, bearing them up and up on a cascading sea. Then Harry jerked forwards, bit his lip, and finally lost eye contact with Draco as he came, violently.</p><p>Draco found himself following. It was unexpected enough that he let out a cry. The ritual had compelled it, he knew.</p><p>And the energy seized from both of them, their willingness and their pleasure, crackled into the runes and made them flare like comets crashing to earth. Draco did manage to turn his head and watch the runes lift off the ground, streaking across the sky like falling stars—</p><p>Or rising stars, given that they blasted through the silver dome cradling the circle of standing stones from above and soared up beyond that, to form another circle in the sky, perfectly positioned relative to the standing stones and the places on the ground they had come from. They glittered, once, a huge pulsing of light.</p><p>Then they fell down and slammed into Harry as he crouched over Draco, panting.</p><p>The runes branded themselves into Harry’s chest and back and scars and forehead. Harry screamed, and for a second, it was the same agonized sound that he had uttered when the light of the ritual space peeled the shadows from him and drove him back into a solid body.</p><p>Draco gritted his teeth and endured it. He knew what was coming.</p><p>And it did. In seconds, Harry’s cry of pain changed into one of exultation. Draco looked back at him with a smile, and watched as his skin smoked and <em>healed</em>, his chest glowed and grew fuller, his magic throbbed and settled into his skin as if it was a beloved pet coming home, and a few of his teeth grew back in.</p><p>It wasn’t a full healing. That would take potions and time. But Harry was staring at his hands and trembling, and Draco knew he was closer to the sanity that he needed to function than he had been in months.</p><p>Perhaps years?</p><p>Draco gave a quick shake of his head. He couldn’t think of that, or he would rise straight off this mattress when the ritual ended and go hunt down Harry’s enemies for himself.</p><p>Harry caught his eye and smiled. It wasn’t the same smile that Draco had sometimes seen on his face when he laughed with his friends at Hogwarts. For one thing, there were still the missing teeth and red gums. For another, there were shadows in his eyes that Draco suspected would always be there, no matter how potions he took and how many years he spent healing. Some things, magic couldn’t cure.</p><p>But he was no longer the mad thing that Draco had helped to escape the cell. He was a <em>vengeful </em>thing as he rose from his knees and the mattress dissipated beneath them, lowering them gently back to the grass. Draco wriggled his arse, and Harry withdrew carefully. Draco reached out and rolled a small stone that was pressing right into the small of his back away.</p><p>“Are you all right?”</p><p>Harry’s gaze was so intense that Draco felt as if he could see by it, even as the golden and silver domes crackled out of existence and left only his little floating <em>Lumos </em>Charm as their light. He nodded and said, “I told you, the ritual provided everything we needed so as to make it not hurt.”</p><p>“I’m not talking about that.”</p><p>Draco stared into Harry’s eyes and took a long moment to speak, so that Harry would know Draco was treating his question with the seriousness it deserved. “I am,” Draco said finally. “But I would very much like to help you kill your enemies. As long as it doesn’t involve Dark Arts. I swore an oath to—well, the doppelganger of you that I wouldn’t practice them anymore.”</p><p>Harry lifted his hands. Silver knives formed at the edges of his fingers, and he swept his hands down, hard, over Draco, to embed in the grass on either side of his body.</p><p>Draco gasped, on the edge of a shriek. The knives hadn’t touched him, but they had torn <em>something </em>away from him, something like an invisible caul that had been covering him and which he’d ceased to notice.</p><p>“There,” Harry said softly. “That oath is broken. You can use them if you want.”</p><p>Draco licked his lips. “Then it would be my honor to hunt beside you.”</p><p>Harry gave him a smile that Draco sincerely hoped would be the last one Robards and Skeeter and the others saw before they died.</p><p>“You’ll be welcome.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Can we trust your friends?”</p><p>“I don’t know.”</p><p>Harry was pacing slowly back and forth across the length of the Malfoy library. Draco watched him in silence. It was nearly morning now; in fact, Draco thought he could see the first vestiges of dawn’s pearly light peeking in through the windows. But neither of them had wanted to go to sleep, or probably would have been able to, given the way the ritual had energized them.</p><p>Besides, they only had a limited amount of time before the Ministry would probably announce Harry Potter’s kidnapping or disappearance. Draco was betting on kidnapping, so they could stir up the maximum amount of drama and have the most people looking for Harry. Harry thought it would be disappearance, or even that they would announce he was sick and would be out of sight for a little while, given that they wouldn’t want to make it seem they had lost control of the situation.</p><p>“Why not?”</p><p>Harry paused and looked at him. His eyes gleamed with a ripple of the power that had loomed over the circle of standing stones. Draco thought he did a very bad job of hiding his shiver, but luckily, Harry only smiled once and returned to pacing back and forth.</p><p>“Because they didn’t raise a fuss,” Harry said. “You told me they didn’t, and it wasn’t something that Robards or the rest ever discussed in front of me, either, even when they wanted to taunt me. That means that either they didn’t know the difference between me and the doppelganger, or…”</p><p>“They preferred the spiritless version of you.”</p><p>Harry gave a harsh, croaking laugh that made Draco remember the way he had looked when Draco first took him out of the cell. “Oh, he has plenty of spirit. His own opinions, even. That’s why they could make him so convincing. They took <em>so much </em>from me.”</p><p>Lightning arced away from him as he spoke. Draco jumped, and then cast a quick spell to prevent it from incinerating the books on the nearest shelf. Harry stared at the dwindling flames in silence for a moment.</p><p>“Sorry.”</p><p>“It’s all right.” Draco quelled the last of the flames and turned to face him. “Well, your doppelganger opposed a bill on house-elf rights that Granger wanted to bring in front of the Wizengamot. It’s possible that she would have wondered what was going on with you, and we should go to her first.”</p><p>He hesitated, aware of another problem, and Harry glanced at him. “What?”</p><p>“I don’t know how to get your wand back from the doppelganger. I don’t know where he would put it. I suppose it would drop wherever he is when the magic runs out, or maybe it would be down in the cells, and—”</p><p>“I will <em>never </em>go back there again. I’ll burn the Ministry down first.”</p><p>The lightning was arcing around Harry again, and Draco extended his arm to calm him. “I can understand that. Don’t worry about it. We’ll find a way to make this work. Perhaps you could borrow one of the Malfoy wands that my ancestors used. My father never throws anything away, and a wand with a dead owner isn’t the same as trying to use a wand you haven’t mastered. One of them might respond to you.”</p><p>Harry shut his eyes and breathed for a long moment. Then he said, “I actually have a solution to that problem. Not that it could help me in that cell where all my magic was blocked.” He held out his hand.</p><p>There was a humming, whooshing noise, as if something was traveling at speed through the house, and a wand slammed into Harry’s palm. Draco stared at it with widening eyes. The wand looked as if it was made of—</p><p>“Elder.” Harry spun it once, and the wand sparked and spat dark fire that burned out harmlessly in the air long before it would have encountered the library books, to Draco’s immense relief. “The Elder Wand.”</p><p>“It answers to you,” Draco whispered. “I’m amazed that it let you be imprisoned.”</p><p>“They took me in Robards’s house,” Harry answered flatly. “I still trusted him, and when they bound me with the <em>process </em>the Department of Mysteries invented, which established the connection between me and the doppelganger…”</p><p>His body crackled with a grey aura that frankly scared Draco more than the dark fire. He held his breath, and only spoke again when Harry had the aura under control. “Do you think we’ll have to fight the Unspeakables?”</p><p>Harry shook his head roughly, shaggy hair flying around him. “I doubt it. None of them ever showed up to talk to me or study the process, and they would have. I think they invented the damn thing, but the Department of Magical Law Enforcement was the one that decided to use it.”</p><p>Draco nodded. It was good to know that the most powerful department in the Ministry probably wasn’t on their list of enemies, at least. “Do you want to approach Granger?”</p><p>Harry closed his eyes. “It has less to do with not trusting her.”</p><p>“Yes?”</p><p>“And more to do with thinking that she won’t approve of what I mean to do.”</p><p>Draco hadn’t thought of that. He had assumed that Granger’s unshakeable loyalty would hold her to Harry’s side no matter what. After all, it had kept her there while she and Harry went on an insane quest to defeat the Dark Lord, and they had used Unforgivables together, from what Draco had heard. But murder might be something different.</p><p>“And it would take too long,” Harry said, his voice descending into a growl.</p><p>Draco nodded slowly. “You think they’ll come up with a way to defend against what you’ll do if we don’t move now.”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>Harry glanced at him, and his eyes were flaring, brilliant green holes into something dark and depthless. Draco found his breath coming faster. Harry smiled smugly at him, his lips curling up a little.</p><p>“You won’t hesitate. I trust Hermione and Ron, but—they’ll want explanations, they’ll want to <em>discuss </em>things, they’ll distrust you, they’ll want to come up with some solution other than hurting and murdering the people who hurt me. I don’t want that.”</p><p>As far as Draco was concerned, Harry deserved to get whatever he wanted, given all the years he’d spent in that foul prison. He nodded. “What’s your first plan? Or did you want me to come up with that, as the <em>cunning Slytherin</em>?”</p><p>Harry started to answer, but then glanced over his shoulder. “I think someone is outside the door of the library.”</p><p>Draco nodded and stood, walking over to it while Harry drifted behind a bookshelf. Draco would prefer to keep either of his parents from realizing that Harry was here, as impossible as that might ultimately be. He didn’t want to deal with their objections any more than Harry wanted to deal with his friends’.</p><p>Narcissa was outside the door, a paper folded over her arm. Draco couldn’t see the full story, but there was a picture of Harry, or rather of his doppelganger, and the half-visible headline had the letters <em>ICK </em>in it. Draco nodded. Harry had been right. They’d gone for the illness story to give themselves a few days to frantically hunt for Harry.</p><p>“Draco, what did you <em>do</em>?” Narcissa hissed.</p><p>Draco met his mother’s eyes. “What I could.”</p><p>“Just because you want to pay back a life-debt—”</p><p>Draco shook his head. “This is more than that, Mother, and I think you know it. I couldn’t have left Potter in that situation.” It already sounded unnatural to call the man he’d helped, who’d fucked him to completion last night, Potter, but Draco was able to keep a calm countenance as he did. “Not and ever lived with myself.”</p><p>Narcissa stared at him hard, but Draco was a master of these kinds of games. He looked back at her calmly, and Narcissa finally closed her eyes and shook her head.</p><p>“Don’t get caught,” she whispered. “And avoid your father for a little while. He’s upset and already planning to leave Britain if necessary, and there’s not much I can do to soothe him.” Then she turned and walked down the corridor.</p><p>Draco blinked and shut the door, turning in time to see Harry emerge from behind the shelf. “Is she going to insist on searching the library later?” Harry asked in a hoarse whisper, turning his head as if tracking the progress of an invisible mouse along the walls.</p><p>“No,” Draco said, with a long sigh. “The reason my parents didn’t want me to help you is that they think you’re mad and there’s nothing that could heal you. They didn’t want me to get hurt. It had nothing to do with thinking the Ministry was in the right.”</p><p>Harry gave a dark snort. “I assume that neither of my friends thought that way, either, but the end result is the same.”</p><p>Draco nodded. He wasn’t going to ask Harry for sympathy for his parents, or for his friends who had accepted and believed the doppelganger enough to never search for any trace of him. “Who’s the first target?’</p><p>“Robards is the one who adapted the process from the Department of Mysteries. And set them on that course of research in the first place. I have to assume that even then, he was thinking about using it on me.”</p><p>Draco smiled at him. “Then he’s first.”</p><p>*</p><p>Gawain Robards had retired to a small house on the outskirts of magical London which stood separate from the Muggle homes around it. The wards made it eye-watering to look for, but Harry had tracked Robards effortlessly from the feeling of his own magic that Robards had swallowed.</p><p><em>Bet you never thought that consuming that magic would betray you like this, </em>Draco thought darkly as they crouched on the outside edge of the wards, which surrounded the small, weed-laden garden with sparkling walls.</p><p>“Plan?” he asked Harry.</p><p>“Harm him.”</p><p>Harry wasn’t covered with shadows or half-melting the way he had been when Draco pulled him from the cell, but his eyes were wide and sparking as they had then, and Draco doubted that he was any more sane. Draco nodded and stood back. Harry brought the Elder Wand up.</p><p>There was a moment of complicated light between Harry’s magic and the Wand that Draco didn’t understand. It even caused some sparking in himself, which startled him, but he assumed it had to do with the magic that he’d lent Harry through the sex ritual.</p><p>Harry tossed his head back and screamed.</p><p>The scream soared into a howl like that of a werewolf, and a swirling, dark grey shape formed in front of Harry. It slunk low enough to the ground that it didn’t <em>look </em>much like a wolf, but Draco had no doubt of what it was meant to be anyway. The wolf flowed towards the edge of the wards, and sniffed them for a moment.</p><p>Then it opened an enormous pair of serrated jaws, which swelled until they were larger than the ward-encircled house. Draco found himself gasping and fighting not to step back as the jaws came down.</p><p>The teeth <em>sawed </em>through the wards, and squeezed, and someone inside the house screamed in utter agony. Then the wards were gone, and the wolf turned back into dark grey magic which retreated to Harry and spun around him.</p><p>Draco found himself grinning. The scream still wasn’t as loud as Harry’s when he’d been in the cell, and he couldn’t regret whatever damage the destruction of the wards had done to Robards.</p><p>“Ready?” Harry asked, and held out a hand.</p><p>Draco grasped it, and the grey magic spread out its circle to encompass him, too. They stepped forwards—</p><p>And seemed to <em>blur </em>through the space between them and the house, rather than Apparating or simply walking. Draco gasped as they came out of it and found themselves standing in the doorway of the house.</p><p>“What was that?”</p><p>“A way for my magic to expend itself,” Harry murmured as touched the Elder Wand to the door and it simply disintegrated into a pile of wood shavings. “It’s still unstable, despite what you did to shore it up. The more I can use it, the better.”</p><p>Draco nodded, and took only a quick glance around Robards’s entrance hall, just long enough to realize how awful the man’s taste was. The paintings on the walls resembled Muggle landscapes without the charm, and there was overdone gold and crystal on everything.</p><p>Harry glided through it, headed straight for a room upstairs. Draco followed.</p><p>On the floor of what seemed to be a large sitting room, Robards sprawled, one arm extended as if he had been trying to crawl towards the fireplace when the wards went down. Bloody shards of bone were all that remained of the hand.</p><p>“Hello, Gawain.”</p><p>Robards turned his head and saw both Harry and Draco. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out.</p><p>“Oh, silent?” Harry’s hands flexed. “Don’t worry, that won’t last long.”</p><p>He raised the Elder Wand. For a moment, a flicker of black power formed on it, and then it merged with the grey protective magic that still encircled both of them and grew and swelled. Draco blinked as he saw the shape that the combined power was taking. It looked like—four horses with fiery eyes?</p><p>“There’s an old Muggle punishment,” Harry said in a conversational tone as the horses trotted across air to stand next to Robards’s hands and legs, “that uses four horses. Of course, we’re magical, so I decided to be a little more <em>poetic </em>than that.”</p><p>He snapped his fingers. The grey magic formed into a set of chains, one linking Robards’s shattered hand to the horse nearest it, and the others clasping around his free wrist and his ankles and reaching out to the horses nearest <em>them. </em></p><p>“What are you going to do?” Draco said.</p><p>“Pull his body apart to retrieve my magic.” Harry smiled, his eyes so bright that Draco thought he could see a faint green glow from them. “And at the same time, incidentally, kill him.”</p><p><em>Incidentally, </em>Draco thought, but then he remembered, again, the way Harry had looked in the prison cell. He swallowed and took a step to the side where he thought it likely that he wouldn’t get splattered with blood.</p><p>Robards found his voice. “Don’t!” he shouted. “You have no idea what’s been happening in the last five years outside your cell! Without me, there’s no way that you can take up your old life again!”</p><p>“You thought I could <em>ever </em>have it back?” Harry’s voice was low enough that Draco wasn’t sure what he was feeling. He looked at the horses and nodded to them.</p><p>The horses reared, the chains of magic behind them shaking, and then galloped forwards.</p><p>Draco found himself turning his eyes away in the end. He couldn’t watch. The thick sound, like meat being pulled apart for a sandwich, told him well enough what was happening in any case.</p><p>“<em>Ahhh.</em>”</p><p>Draco looked back at Harry, carefully avoiding the glimpse of black and red and white that he could see from the corner of his eye, and then stared. Ribbons of dark green and blue were flowing into Harry, rising from the thing Draco wasn’t looking at. The horses and chains had dissipated, but Harry stood absorbing this magic with his hands held out and his mouth slightly creased in a blissful smile.</p><p>“That’s your power that he took?” Draco whispered. “I know you said you were going to get it back, but…”</p><p>“Yes.” Harry smiled at him without humor, but then the pleasure came back, probably because the magic flowing back into him felt so good. “You would have thought it would be dissipated or absorbed into Robards’s magic by now. No, the method they took ensured that wouldn’t happen. They explained it to me once, about how it was different. And how I could have avoided that if I had <em>done what they wanted.</em>”</p><p>There was a sharp, vicious snap on the last words, and something heavy flew into the air. Draco breathed through the scent of blood, and Harry gazed at the remains of his enemy for a long time before he nodded to Draco.</p><p>“Skeeter should be next.”</p><p>*</p><p>“There’s someone else in the house with him.”</p><p>Skeeter’s house was a small building, like Robards’s, this time on the outskirts of Hogsmeade. It didn’t have wards around it. Skeeter might have dismantled them himself, Draco thought, pulling in the strength in preparation for what he knew was coming.</p><p>“Is it someone else who took your magic?” Draco asked quietly. He looked up as a gate closed somewhere near. He wasn’t worried about them being sensed, though. Harry’s Invisibility Cloak had come to them as well when he called for it, and had willingly stretched to cover the both of them. If this was Death’s Cloak, no one else in the vicinity would be able to pierce its protections.</p><p>“No. I can only sense that the magic he <em>did </em>steal from me is splashing against someone else’s aura.”</p><p>Draco tried to work out how that could even be possible, and then gave up. He didn’t need to know how it worked. He only had to appreciate the benefits that it provided.</p><p>Harry glanced at him, expression dark in a way that had nothing to do with magic or insanity. “You’re still with me?”</p><p><em>Probably he’s thinking about the way that I couldn’t face Robards’s death, </em>Draco thought, and lifted his chin. “Yes. I’m sorry that I couldn’t look directly at the way you killed Robards, but—”</p><p>“Don’t worry. I was only wondering about the fact that we’ll have a witness. I don’t care that much about what happens to my reputation in Britain, but your career as an Auror is over.”</p><p>Draco shook his head. “I didn’t have much of a career as an Auror in any case. They wouldn’t use me in fieldwork, most of the time. They’re not going to use me again. Dawlish talked to me, which only meant they suspected I was too interested in the secrets of your doppelganger.”</p><p>Harry simply nodded. “And your parents?”</p><p>“I’ll make sure they’re safe somehow. They have money and a safehouse in France in case anything ever happened to them, anyway, and my father was talking about leaving, according to my mother.”</p><p>Harry inclined his head once, and then walked towards the house. Draco went with him. Harry drew off the Cloak when he drew the Elder Wand, and Skeeter’s door turned to wind and drifted away.</p><p>They made it through an entrance hall with black-and-white tile and into a small room that looked like it might be a dining room before Harry stopped dead.</p><p>Draco peered past Harry’s shoulder. Skeeter stood in the room ahead of them, sure enough, looking nervous and defiant, his hands clasped in front of him as if he was going to beg for mercy.</p><p>Standing next to him was Ginny Weasley.</p><p>“Harry?” Weasley whispered, her eyes traveling slowly back and forth between Harry and Skeeter, with only a brief detour to Draco. “What’s going on? They said you were sick, but—you seemed fine last night—and—what happened to your <em>teeth</em>?”</p><p>Harry bared said teeth and gave a low snarl. “I don’t want you involved in this, Ginny. I’ll explain later, but what you need to know is that Skeeter has been preying on me, and I’m going to get revenge.”</p><p>Weasley glanced at Skeeter. “I see what you mean,” she said in a low, disturbed voice. “That doesn’t sound like Harry to me.”</p><p><em>Oh, very clever, </em>Draco thought, with acid in his stomach. Bring Weasley here, and make Harry unlikely or unwilling to kill in front of her, all the while she thought she was actually addressing the doppelganger.</p><p>“Harry.” Weasley’s voice was low and soothing as she stepped away from Skeeter and stood in front of him with her arms spread, her eyes fixed on Harry. This time, she did spare more of a glance for Draco, though, a weak frown. “I don’t know what Malfoy has told you, or the people he’s working with, but I promise you, it’s not real. This is part of a plot against the Ministry, and Minister Shacklebolt. You need to listen to me and come with me. They have some Mind-Healers on standby who will be able to help you regain your sense of what’s real. Trust me.” She held out her hand.</p><p>Harry trembled in place for a moment. Behind the shelter of the man’s body, Draco drew his wand.</p><p>He would cast the spells himself to subdue Skeeter and Weasley if necessary, although he didn’t think he could pull out Harry’s magic from Skeeter the way Harry would demand. But he wasn’t letting Skeeter get away with this.</p><p>“Please. Trust me. Come back to us.”</p><p>Harry reared back and screamed again, and both Skeeter and Weasley jumped. Harry whipped out his hand and reached around Weasley, and Skeeter screamed in turn as sudden spirals of bone pierced his sides, his legs, and his arms, his skeleton altering and growing so that he was caged in it.</p><p>He stopped screaming when the bones of his skull grew into his eyes. Draco watched it this time, his heart a thunder in his ears, ignoring the way that Weasley shrieked and demanded that Harry stop.</p><p>The threads of magic unfolded from Skeeter the way they had from Robards, and streamed into Harry. He bowed his head and accepted them. Weasley, in the meantime, drew her wand and aimed it.</p><p>Draco had no idea what she planned to do with it, and no care. He Disarmed her and kicked her wand to the floor behind them. Weasley stared at him with hatred that might have impressed him if he hadn’t seen Harry’s.</p><p>“Malfoy,” she hissed. “You’re responsible for this. I’ll make you <em>pay.</em>”</p><p>“No,” Draco said evenly. “They kept him in a cell for five years, Weasley, and drained enough magic from him to make a doppelganger that could pass as him. But they also drained magic from him and fed on it for their own uses. Harry is taking it back. That’s all.”</p><p>Harry tensed. Draco glanced at him and hoped that it wasn’t about Draco using his first name, but Harry said nothing about that. His eyes were clearer than they had been, again, and one hand stroked the Elder Wand as he stared thoughtfully at Weasley.</p><p>“Ginny,” he said. “What conversation did we have right before I left for that month’s holiday five years ago?”</p><p>Weasley tensed so hard that she let out a noise of pain. Then she said, “Harry, I don’t think we should discuss this in front of Malfoy—”</p><p>“<em>Tell me, Ginny.</em>”</p><p>Weasley blinked once, hard. Then she looked away from Harry and said in a small voice, “You said that you wouldn’t be dating me anymore, because you’d figured out that you preferred men.”</p><p>“And so you never wondered why I came back from that month’s holiday and immediately started dating witches? Why I eventually started dating you? Why I would agree to be the Ministry’s little pet, when I didn’t even want to be an Auror half the time?”</p><p>“I thought you changed your mind.”</p><p>Harry stared in silence at Weasley. His silence was deep and disgusted. Draco said nothing. He thought this was a private matter between Harry and his ex-girlfriend, and he had to resolve it.</p><p>“And that’s probably everyone’s excuse,” Harry muttered at last. “The changes were beneficial for them, or they didn’t mind them, so they just ignored them.” He sighed and shook his head. “They held me prisoner and tortured me for five years, Ginny, while using my magic to create a version of me. That’s the truth.”</p><p>“But—you said you loved me two days ago.”</p><p>“That was <em>him</em>. It. The doppelganger.”</p><p>Weasley closed her eyes, but the underside of her eyelids brimmed with tears. Harry turned roughly away, and grabbed Draco’s hand. Draco followed him without another glance back at Weasley. He had no feelings in particular towards her, even though he thought he would have questioned the sudden change in personality of a man he actually loved more seriously than she had.</p><p>“How are we going to find the Hit Wizards and the others who fed on your magic?” he asked as they stopped outside the house. “I don’t know their names the way I did with Robards and Skeeter.”</p><p>“I told you, I can track their magic.” Harry lifted his head and sniffed the air for a second like a wolf scenting prey. “But I think it’ll be a better object lesson to draw them all into one central location and punish them there.”</p><p>“Can you do that?”</p><p>“If I pull hard enough on the magic that they took from me? Yes. It’ll act like a chain around their bones, drawing them there.”</p><p>Draco carefully didn’t think about Skeeter’s corpse in the house behind them, impaled by his own skeleton. “And why do you want to do that in public? Why punish them in public?”</p><p>Harry turned and stared at him with hot eyes. Draco braced himself. It was like being looked at by a hurricane, but he reminded himself of what he and Harry had been through together so far, including the sex ritual, and it only made him sway a little.</p><p>In a moment, the sensation of the hurricane-gaze passed, and Harry reached out and caught Draco’s hands, drawing him in the way he had during the ritual. Draco went with him and leaned his head on Harry’s shoulder for a moment. He still felt like a bonfire.</p><p>“The Ministry got away with what they did because no one outside the most secret department in the place and my <em>torturers </em>even knew making a doppelganger was possible,” Harry murmured. “I want to make sure that they don’t have the chance to do anything like that again. My vengeance is going to be public. Their punishment is going to be public.”</p><p>“You realize that you’ll never be able to stay in Great Britain again, after this.”</p><p>“Do you think I care?”</p><p>Tension surged through Harry’s muscles, and Draco raised his hand and gently massaged Harry’s shoulder. “I didn’t think so, but I wanted to be sure that you knew. Some people would think that the cost of such a thing would be—well, too horrific to undergo willingly.”</p><p>“I’ve already been through my horrible, costly thing.” Harry’s eyes flashed as he stepped back. “Let other people bear theirs.”</p><p><em>And may Merlin have mercy on them, </em>Draco thought, but didn’t see the point in saying.</p><p>*</p><p>Harry chose Diagon Alley, and Draco thought he could see why. He might have had an easier time herding his targets together in the Ministry—although maybe not, since Robards and Skeeter had obviously had enough warning to go into hiding—but it wouldn’t have had enough witnesses who weren’t Ministry flunkies.</p><p>They Apparated into a side alley, and Harry stood with his eyes closed for a second. Draco kept his wand drawn and his gaze vigilant and scanning. No one tried to approach them, although a few people passed the mouth of the alley and blinked at them.</p><p>“Now,” Harry said, and snapped his eyes open.</p><p>A silver tornado of power rose out of him, and swirled into the air. Cries answered it. The tornado streaked away towards what seemed to be the four directions, one definitely towards the Ministry, and Harry gave Draco a feral grin.</p><p>“I won’t be able to do things like that when my magic is stable again and I have all of it back,” he said confidingly. “But I’m going to bloody well enjoy it while I can.”</p><p>And he strode into the alley with the silver wisps of his power tumbling around him and Draco at his back.</p><p>Draco saw people orient on them at once, even though the silver magic was still gone to fetch its victims. The aura of wildness and fury around Harry was impossible to miss, rising up into the air and clarifying it. Then Harry tossed his hood back, and more people stared at them in confusion instead of horror.</p><p>“Deputy Head Potter!” called a woman in the uniform of a Hit Wizard, taking a cautious step towards them. “Are you all right? What’s going on?”</p><p>“No, I’m not all right, Alicia.” Harry gave her a smile that made her reel back and put a hand on her wand, but when Draco glanced at him, Harry shook his head subtly. So she wasn’t someone who had reaped his magic, just someone he had once known. “I’m waiting.”</p><p>Other witches and wizards started to crowd towards them now, apparently assuming that there was no danger if Harry was standing there calmly. “What’s happening?” someone asked, and someone else echoed him, until the Alley was filled with chatter.</p><p>Harry tilted his head back, and said, “An answer is coming.”</p><p>Everyone else looked up, too, which meant they saw the bodies practically raining from the sky when Harry’s silver magic snapped them to earth. Hit Wizards, for the most part, hit the stones of the Alley, although there were a few in Auror robes. Harry lifted his hands, and the silver tornado manifested again, then split, so that an individual small one was rotating above the head of each of them.</p><p>Draco stared at them, and swallowed. There were more than thirty. Even assuming that none of them had taken as much of Harry’s magic as Robards and Skeeter had, this was an <em>enormous </em>amount of torture.</p><p>“Five years ago,” Harry told the staring crowd, “I went on a month’s holiday. When I came back from that, I had changed my mind about quitting the Aurors and decided to stay with them. I had also stopped dating the Muggle man named Charles Isom whom some of you might remember.”</p><p>“You’re not bent!” yelled a person who apparently wanted to defend Harry against his own accusations.</p><p>Harry laughed, and the wild, cackling nature of it made that person fall silent, and some others back away as if Harry was a hyena. Draco didn’t move. He didn’t think he would ever want to leave Harry’s side again if Harry permitted it.</p><p>“I am,” Harry said. “I always have been, but it took me a while to realize it. It didn’t take the Ministry that long. I was called into a meeting with Robards, who was still the Head Auror then, and Jared Skeeter, the Head of the DMLE. They told me that they required me to stay an Auror and start dating a <em>suitable witch.</em></p><p>“I refused. In fact, I laughed in their faces. And they grabbed me, dragged me to a dungeon hidden in the Ministry, and enslaved me. They <em>fed </em>on my magic.” Harry clenched his hands, and the Hit Wizards and Aurors on the ground jerked and screamed all at once.</p><p>“They used part of it to construct a doppelganger who would do as they wanted,” Harry continued in a casual voice. “Their own good little pet Harry Potter, who did date women and become the perfect Auror and then the Deputy Head of the DMLE. But they also fed on my magic. They <em>took it </em>from me.”</p><p>His voice chilled, and the rotating silver tornadoes grew sharp tips, although Draco thought he might be the only one who noticed that. Everyone else was staring at Harry, gaping in terror and wonder.</p><p>“They took it from me. For five years. Five years I’ve spent in a dungeon.” Harry looked up, and there was a sudden scramble back from him in the front ranks, which crashed into those people still standing on their toes to see. “And now, I take it <em>back.</em>”</p><p>The silver tornadoes drilled abruptly down into the shoulders and arms of the Hit Wizards and Aurors lying on the ground. They screamed breathlessly, and clawed at the cobblestones with their fingers.</p><p>And the streams unfolded from them the way they had from Skeeter and Robards, coming back to Harry. He bowed his head and sighed as it flooded in, but as more and more of it came home, he also began to tremble.</p><p>Draco stepped up behind him and laid his hands on Harry’s shoulders. He might have been singularly useless in the actual hunt, he decided, but he could do this much. He could shelter Harry and give him the strength he needed as he became whole again for the first time in five years.</p><p>The streams suddenly disappeared, and so did the silver tornadoes, at the same moment. Draco gripped his wand. He wasn’t sure if Harry had retrieved all his magic, or if someone else had interfered and damped the retrieval process.</p><p>Harry lifted his head, and laughed.</p><p>It was a free, strong sound, and Draco looked into his face and caught his breath. The motionless bodies of the Hit Wizards and Aurors—although he thought they were unconscious, not dead—and the nervous crowd ceased to exist for him. Everything he had imagined for the last five years was in front of him.</p><p><em>This </em>was the impatient, temperamental, callous Harry Potter who should have had the chance to exist free of prison. This was the man who had testified for Draco and whom he had dreamed about.</p><p>He was marked, perhaps, by stronger suffering than Draco would ever have wished on him, but he had survived. Draco licked his lips. Harry was more attractive right now than he had been even in the circle of standing stones.</p><p>Harry opened his eyes, and saw him.</p><p>His laughter ended. He stared at Draco with eyes that brimmed with speechless wonder, and then he reached out and drew him close with a hand on his waist and one on the back of his neck. Draco went, not daring to think about what would happen next, only knowing that he wanted to be here and this was the moment he had longed for.</p><p>Harry’s lips touched his, and Draco shuddered with the kiss.</p><p>“<em>Harry! </em>What are you <em>doing</em>?”</p><p>The kiss ended. Draco whipped his head around and saw Weasley—the male Weasley—and Granger racing down the Alley towards them. They had to slow as they got closer, both because the remnants of the crowd were rushing past them and because the Hit Wizards and Aurors were in the way, so they were having to step over flung-out limbs.</p><p>“Hello, Ron, Hermione.” Harry’s voice was calm. “Did you hear what I said about what they did to me?”</p><p>“We were, but it’s mental, mate.” Weasley gave Draco an uneasy glance and then seemed to have decided to ignore him. His attention was on Harry, instead. “They didn’t <em>really </em>imprison you and make you—do that. We saw you every day for the last five years! You’re dating my sister!”</p><p>“You saw my doppelganger,” Harry said, and Draco thought only someone as close to Harry as he was would have felt the way he trembled. “Didn’t it seem <em>strange </em>to you that I just suddenly dropped Charles like I did and declared that I liked women? That I didn’t join you until the last week of our holiday, when I’d promised to be with you the whole time? That I didn’t act the way I used to, even though I’d talked about quitting the Ministry?”</p><p>“We—thought you’d changed.” Granger was quiet. She was staring at Harry’s broken mouth, Draco thought, but he couldn’t be sure. “Ginny told us that you had a long talk and repaired your relationship. And I thought it was strange that you opposed my work with house-elves, but I know you didn’t have the exact same attitude towards them…”</p><p>“And you never questioned it,” Harry said. He shook his head a little, and then closed his eyes. Draco felt him inhale and exhale, but he kept quiet, because he didn’t think that he could understand exactly what was going through Harry’s head, and he didn’t want to try. “You never looked for some <em>reason </em>why I was that way.”</p><p>“We didn’t think we had to.” Weasley swiped his hand through his hair. “We didn’t—it’s not like anyone was going around thinking of doppelgangers!”</p><p>“I wouldn’t have expected you to think of the Ministry’s exact plot,” Harry said. “But Malfoy was suspicious that something was wrong, and he found out the secret in a few days. They weren’t guarding it as well as they thought they were. They’d probably got a bit careless, but still. Someone who didn’t know me that well found me in a few <em>days.</em>”</p><p>His voice was low and ruthless, Draco could tell that much, even if he didn’t think that he could read the rest of the emotions in it. And Weasley and Granger flinched and looked at the ground.</p><p>“I didn’t know,” Granger whispered. “We didn’t know. I’m sorry. We just thought—you’d changed your mind.”</p><p>“Even when I didn’t behave the way I’d done just a month before? Even though I became the Ministry’s little pet?”</p><p>“Everyone’s allowed to change their minds, mate,” Weasley mumbled. Draco, studying them, did think they were sincerely sorry, and also that it might not matter. They weren’t the ones who had come and found Harry. They weren’t the ones who had seen him in that cell and decided they had to do something.</p><p>It was a position that Draco had sometimes daydreamed about in the past, seeing Weasley and Granger humbled, and himself at Harry’s side. But he found that he couldn’t take much satisfaction in it now. Weasley and Granger hadn’t done something terrible the way he had once imagined they might. It was what they <em>hadn’t </em>done. And Draco would have given up his position in a minute if it had meant that Harry wouldn’t be suffering the torments of five years in a cell.</p><p>The thought surprised Draco, and made him blink. <em>I’m that ready to give up so much for him in the space of a few days?</em></p><p>But when he thought about it, to be honest with himself, it was longer than a few days. He’d daydreamed about this. He’d scorned the doppelganger for not being exactly who Draco thought he should be. He’d had no career as an Auror, not the way he’d dreamed of it, and little enough of a life. He’d wanted Potter to be an arsehole simply because that was who he was, who he really was.</p><p>He’d slept with the man last night. He’d gone in and rescued him at great personal risk, and he’d stood by his side as Harry killed people and not abandoned or scolded him.</p><p>He’d gone and got him out.</p><p><em>I’m ready, </em>Draco thought as he looked at Weasley and Granger, at their pale, lost faces. <em>I’m ready to give up what I have to to stand at his side. But they’re not. They’re not used to the idea. They thought they had him all along, and now they can hardly cope with the idea that they didn’t.</em></p><p>Granger swallowed. “Did you—did you kill the others, Harry?”</p><p>“Robards and Skeeter? Yes.”</p><p>“Harry. <em>Why? </em>It’s murder.” Tears were forming in Granger’s eyes.</p><p>Harry gave her a look that would have seared Draco, but he wasn’t sure how much impact it had on Granger, given that she was standing there and looking at Harry with pleading eyes. “They tortured me. I wanted to get them back. I wanted to take back the magic they stole from me, and I wanted to make sure that no one would ever try that doppelganger trick on me again.”</p><p>“But you could have done something else—” That was Weasley.</p><p>Harry laughed, the wild, cracking thing that Draco remembered from the cell, and Draco leaned heavily on his shoulder. “Really? You think I could have? That people would have believed me? I doubt it.” He shook his head, making his wild hair rise and settle around him, currents of magic stirring it. “Even you don’t really believe me. I remember what doubt looks like on you.”</p><p>“We believe you,” Granger whispered. “We just need time to absorb this. We need time to think about the fact that so many people are dead.”</p><p>“The ones that are here, I just drained,” Harry said indifferently. “Most of them should be fine. And they conspired to keep me and my torture a secret. But I don’t trust the Ministry. They’ll try to arrest me for murder and the like. I don’t intend to stay and wait for them to do it.” He turned and held out a hand to Draco. “Will you come with me?”</p><p>Draco felt as if he was hurtling down a long, dark tunnel as he stared into Harry’s eyes. The moment passed, and Harry’s eyes seemed to grow dimmer. He started to let his hand fall.</p><p>Draco reached out and clasped it.</p><p>Harry blinked, before a cautious smile lit his face, and Draco wondered if it should have been like this all along, him being the one to take Harry’s hand, instead of the other way around.</p><p>“Yes,” Draco said. “I had little enough to stay here for. No lover, no fulfilling career, no friends worthy of the name.” He would send an owl to his parents once they were abroad and tell them to go to the safehouse in France. They might not even have to go for very long. Even if they were questioned under Veritaserum, they could say truthfully that they’d discouraged Draco from going to free Harry and that they didn’t know how he’d done it.</p><p>“Harry!”</p><p>Harry didn’t look towards his friends’ voices, and this part <em>was </em>like Draco’s daydreams. He nodded. “I don’t know where we’re going,” he said, “but it’s not going to be here. Is there anything you need to pack?”</p><p>“Nothing I can’t buy on the way,” Draco murmured. His family had vaults in other branches of Gringotts, and even accounts in a few Muggle institutions, if they needed them. His father had made that decision after the war. He would be able to get money.</p><p>“Then let’s <em>go</em>,” Harry said, his hand tightening around Draco’s.</p><p>“Harry, please listen to me—”</p><p>“Maybe someday, Hermione,” Harry said, and gave his friends a wistful smile, before he spun in place and took Draco with him.</p><p>Draco felt his heart leap as they traveled across the miles, towards a destination he knew nothing about, with nothing but the robes on their backs, the wands in their hands, and the faith in their hearts.</p><p>
  <em>Wherever I’m going next, it’s going to be different. No more useless sitting behind a desk and wishing I could be a real Auror. No more daydreaming about a life that I don’t dare grasp.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It’s going to be blindingly real.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>With Harry, it couldn’t be anything else.</em>
</p><p>As they flew, Draco became aware that the life-debt no longer itched at his spine. It had settled down into a happy humming in the back of his mind.</p><p>He thought—he believed—that was a good omen.</p><p>
  <b>The End. </b>
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